


Ink Stains

by lesbiancarisi



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Implied abuse, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Nightmares, PTSD, Panic Attacks, Peter is still a lawyer and he's a damn good one, Suicide Attempt(s), Suicide mention, apparently I don't know how to write anything that doesn't hurt my fave characters, implied eating disorder, non graphic abuse, selective mutism, writer!sonny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-02 10:27:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 34,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14542716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbiancarisi/pseuds/lesbiancarisi
Summary: Eight years after his disappearance, Sonny suddenly comes back into Peter's life. He's traumatized, terrified, and in need of some help putting himself back together.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Odd chapters are Sonny's POV, even are Peter's.

When the sun first starts to rise, Sonny’s awake. He slips from his makeshift bed on Peter’s couch to grab his notebook and curl up in the nook by the window. As the fog drifts and settles on the city, he stares down at everything going on with a distant look on his face. In front of him, the paper runs smooth and creamy beneath his absent-minded fingertips. The words never come right away, but once they start to flow, they’ll bleed and dip and curl and weave together a thousand thoughts into thin spun thread of sentences. He starts to write. By the time that Peter wakes up, stumbling into the living room with bedhead and sleep in the corner of his eyes, pages have fluttered by so quickly and yet so slowly at the same time.

“Coffee?”

Sonny doesn’t look up, but he shakes his head and presses the nib of his ninety-nine cent store pen harder into the pages of the fifth spiral he’s gone through in a month. If his lack of response makes Peter feel anything, he doesn’t make it clear. Without having to turn around, Sonny knows that now he’s behind him, starting the coffee pot. It clatters to life with a monstrous growl, followed by the splashing of water being poured in and the sound of the fridge popping open for Peter to get the french vanilla creamer he likes so much. Some things never change.

Then comes the slow drag of a knife through something soft before it grinds against the cutting board. Its sound alone makes Sonny’s shoulders bunch beneath the tee shirt that doesn’t fit him. Some dark grey v-neck in XL, one that hugs Peter’s body comfortably but hands loosely around Sonny’s skinny arms, narrow shoulders, and sharp ribs. He hasn’t been eating since he got there, not that he was really eating before. Whenever Peter is home in time for a meal, he tries to coax Sonny into eating something, but the most success he’s had is getting Sonny to eat an apple- he handed to him before he left, and when he came back ten minutes later to pick up his forgotten wallet Sonny had the core in his hand, watching the window.

A few minutes later, Peter sets a little black bowl of unevenly sliced fruit by Sonny’s waist. He stares down at the bright colors and the slight sheen of what he thinks are various types of melons. Cantaloupe, watermelon, honeydew. His mouth starts to water, but he doesn’t say anything or reach for it. Being stared at, watched, it makes his skin crawl. Even if he wanted to eat, he couldn’t. Still, he’s been trying hard to make progress, and when Peter offers his hand, Sonny takes it and gives it a weak squeeze. It’s their way of communicating, because Sonny’s voice has a funny way of not working sometimes, especially early in the morning or on jumpier days. Over the past month, they’ve gotten better at figuring this out, and Sonny wishes he knew how to express how thankful he is that Peter’s taking care of him through all of this.

He goes back to writing between long stretches of staring out the window as the apartment fills with the sounds of Peter getting ready for work. Water beating against the walls of the shower. Hangers clicking together. A soft exclamation when Peter stubs his toe on the sharp edge of his dresser. Clinking keys and such. All of it goes in its usual pattern until Peter comes back to the living room to leave. What he does, Sonny isn’t sure, but it keeps him on weird hours, gives him paperwork he has to do at the dining room table with a beer beside him. The bottles don’t accumulate. Exhaustion claims him, but he always says goodnight and tells Sonny to sleep well.

“I’ll lock the door, should be home at around five,” Peter says. He always tells Sonny when he’ll be back, and if he’s late, he’ll text him on the old phone that he gave him. It doesn’t have data, but it has an app that lets him text on wifi without a phone number. “As always, you know where everything is if you uh, if you get hungry.”

Before he goes, he holds out his hand for Sonny to squeeze again, and then he’s gone.

Left alone, Sonny focuses back on his writing. His filled notebooks sit in a neat stack in the little cubby against the wall, where his other things stay: his driver’s license, a small stuffed bear, and a worn basket of the pens that Peter bought for him. Pathetic, sure, but he’s glad to have some things that are just his. When he’s sure that Peter isn’t coming back for something he forgot, he manages to bring himself to eat half of the bowl. The rest he protects with cling wrap and shelves in the fridge for later, if he’s hungry after Peter goes to bed. He’s always up later, usually not even trying to go to sleep until after midnight. Surviving on little to no sleep is a skill he mastered a long time ago, and the habit is a hard one to break. If he stops writing, all the thoughts and memories overwhelm him until he has to stop. Sit. Clutch his head in his hands. Try not to let Peter hear him sobbing. The last thing he wants is to become more trouble than he’s worth and get himself tossed out on the streets like a dog.

His words smear a little on the wet ink because his hand moves too quickly for the colors to sink into the pages entirely. Black and blue mar the side of his hand, which escapes his notice until late at night, Peter’s eyes bite down on it as he passes by. Words, so many, perfect but not entirely right, some written in such haste that they fall off the lines on the college-ruled paper. Everything he’s had to go through, all captured in a loopy mess of not quite cursive, makes his chest feel a little lighter as he transfers the memories with the tip of the pen.

Time flies like this, because next thing Sonny knows, the lock of the door rattles. He jumps, curling in on himself and drawing his notebook closer to himself until he realizes that it’s just Peter. Just Peter who shared a dorm room with him when they were in law school together before Sonny had to drop out. Just Peter who always made sure Sonny had dinner at night. Just Peter who would walk him to and from the bus stop on dark nights to make sure that he’s alright. Just Peter who now asks him if he’s alright.

He nods silently.

“I brought takeout. I know that this used to be your favorite. You know, if you’re hungry.”

White plastic coated cardboard held out like an olive branch, a peace offering. Sonny takes it, but he doesn’t know if he can eat it. There’s so much in the container, and it’s probably the richest thing that Sonny’s had since he was eating greasy diner pizza with Peter after final exams. Three years. Four. Five or maybe six. He didn’t have a calendar to keep track of time when his world slowly narrowed to a single house in the middle of nowhere with green shutters on the old school windows.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Peter says, “but eventually I’d like to know how you’ve been. Where you’ve been. I’m worried about you, Sonny.”

Worried. To be worried over is such a weird feeling, one that it seems like millennium since Sonny’s been able to experience. He looks up at Peter and blinks slowly, not knowing how to make his voice work. It does still exist, he knows because he hums to himself when he’s home alone, but talking is still too hard. The memories of burning hands on his face are still too fresh for that.


	2. Chapter 2

Even if Sonny doesn’t say anything, Peter knows that something happened to him between the time he dropped out of school and the night Peter found him sitting outside on the street in nothing but dirty sweatpants, a thin jacket with a broken zipper, and a pair of ratty sneakers. He has yet to speak at all, but he watches. His eyes follow Peter around and sometimes, if he thinks that he’s not being watched, Sonny will smile at him a little. It’s not much, but it’s something. At this point, every little ‘something’ is a miracle. Like the first time that Peter got Sonny to take a shower while he was home. He sat in the living room after handing Sonny a towel and clean clothes. Before that, he would leave them on the counter and come home at night to Sonny with slightly damp hair in messy waves.

“Something on your mind, counselor?” Benson asks, waving a hand in front of his face like she’s been trying to get his attention for a while.

He debates internally for a long moment about if he should talk to her, or what he should say, or if there’s even anything he can do. When it comes down to it, she is probably his closest friend in New York. At the very least, she might be able to give him an outlet to try and sort through all of the things he’s been thinking since he took Sonny in. At his reluctant nod, she waves him into her office and shuts the door behind him. He falls onto her couch almost immediately, loosening his tie and putting his face in his hands.

“This friend of mine. He and I were buddies in college when he suddenly dropped out with just a note on the door that he wasn’t coming back. A month or so ago, I found him freezing and homeless and took him in. He doesn’t talk, doesn’t eat, barely sleeps. And he’s really skittish. I think- I’m fairly certain that something happened to him.”

She nods and Peter catches her jotting something down on the legal pad in front of her. “How long ago did he drop out?”

That takes a moment of consideration Peter had to have been in his mid-twenties by then, possibly later. He counts the years back in his head, ones that have moved so quickly and at the same time dragged by like molasses.

“Years.”

“How many?”

“Seven.”

She writes that down too, and gives him some matronly words of comfort that he’s heard her use on several occasions with victims and their loved ones. Especially when someone’s there to report: she tells them that they’re doing the right thing, and they’re so brave, and all that other fluff that Peter would call her out for if he wasn’t so grateful that she might be able to help him. Help Sonny. Even trying to imagine what he could’ve gone through is painful when he remembers the fact that when he found Sonny, he was downright emaciated. He was- is-  bag of bones, sharp angles, and tissue thin skin from too long without proper food and sunlight. Peter has this hunch that that’s why he spends his days by the window. No matter what time it is, he can always feel the sun’s rays on his face and hands.

More than anything, Peter wants to know what’s going on inside Sonny’s head. It’s his job to figure out why people do what they do and what they’re thinking, but it’s downright impossible when Sonny never talks and Peter would never even dream of violating his privacy and reading whatever it is that he spends all his time writing. He remembers that Sonny hates people reading his work. Despite all his curiosity, he doesn’t even come close to cracking open one of the filled spirals to work at deciphering the mess written in between the ink stained pages.

One of these days, he’ll get to see Sonny eat, hopefully. Logically, he knows that too much too soon could be really bad. But at the same time, he wants to see more than just half a slice of the toast he made for him sitting in the garbage can. Hopefully, the rest was eaten and not just shredded to be tossed away in secret. Seeing Sonny look such a mess is killing him from the inside out. He wants to help him. He just doesn’t know how.

“If you can,” Benson says gently, “Try and bring him in in the morning. Or maybe we could send over Amanda to talk to him tomorrow night, try and keep things from being too overwhelming for him.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Thank you, Lieutenant.”

She dismisses him with a nod and Peter walks back into the precinct. He looks at some of the victims being led through and realizes, with a pang of horror, that a lot of them look like Sonny. The same tremors and and tight body language and dead-behind-the-eyes stares. Some of them are twitching with drug withdrawals or highs, it’s impossible to tell which. Short skirts in vibrant colors, broken heels carried in bony hands, hair falling from aerosol prisons, all mixed in with battered faces, half-buttoned blouses, and rats’ nest ponytails. Peter has always had somewhat of a strong stomach, but he has to turn away this time as he leaves.

Back in his office, he tries to get through the paperwork for some of his upcoming cases, but it’s almost impossible to stay focused. His thoughts keep drifting back to all the possibilities. Working with Manhattan SVU, he’s seen some of the lowest of the low that humanity has to offer. Now, to think about Sonny being hurt by one of those leering men, it gives Peter an almost guilty sensation. Obviously whatever might’ve happened isn’t his fault, but he still wants to think about what would have happened if he had been able to tell something was wrong ahead of time. If he knew, if he had tried harder to search for Sonny went he went missing, maybe the man with the sunny disposition of a golden retriever wouldn’t have turned into a hollow shell.

“Mr. Stone, your 2 o’ clock is here,” Carmen says, poking her head in the door.”

Peter sighs and sets it all aside so he can get through this meeting with a defense attourney.

After that, and a busy afternoon of running between his office and the precinct, Peter finally takes off for the day with a satchel full of case files to go over tonight while he pretends not to notice Sonny’s attention between his notebook, the window, and him. On the way, he grabs takeout. He knows that whatever he buys, Sonny probably won’t eat, but he still buys what he remembers as Sonny’s favorite when they were younger. Maybe that’ll coax him into something. As he’s waiting, looking around the restaurant, he finds himself slipping into Sonny’s typical mindset of watching people like there’s a movie going on in front of him. He sees the awkward first date of two young teenagers, the harried mother trying to get something to bring home to her family, an old man eating by himself in the corner. All these people have lives, just as complex as his own. That’s a thought that gives him a bit of a headache, so he stops thinking about it and goes back to checking his emails as he waits for the announcement that his food is ready.

He takes the subway home as the sun starts to set. In the middle of winter, it’s always dark early, and that coupled with the lack of sun has a tendency to make him feel a little lost, or like he’s living in a faded version of the world he knows. Like peering through a thin veil or a cloudy window. The air is frighteningly still, devoid of wind, even as masses of people hurry down the pavement to get home to their families after their nine to five in a boring cubicle with pictures of their spouse and 2.5 kids next to their monitors. Average.  Most of them will never experience anything that would ever bring them into the sixteenth precinct where they’d meet him through work. Strange, he thinks, that these are still people with infinitely intricate lives he’ll never even begin to get a glimpse into.


	3. Chapter 3

The routine changes this morning. Peter sits down in front of Sonny with his coffee, and at first, just watches. In the fragile light from the window, his green eyes seem darker, and his fingers tap nervously against the mug. He’s hiding something. Sonny glances up at him every few beats but mostly keeps his focus out the window in hopes that whatever he’s about to hear will disappear before Peter can say it. Although he knows that it’s a stupid wish, he still holds it close until the silence stretches too long and Peter starts talking.

“I want you to come into work with me today. There are people I’d like you to meet.”

Sonny stares at him silently. A voice in the back of his head is steadily repeating ‘this is a trap this is a trap this is a trap this is a trap.’ Nothing about this makes sense if it is one; Peter would never hurt him, and he wouldn’t bother with trickery if he ever did. He’s an honest man, always has been. Still, that doesn’t stop Sonny’s chest from tightening and his stomach from revolting. The idea of going anywhere but here is terrifying. Somehow, this windowsill has become the first home, the first safe haven in far too long, and he doesn’t want to venture beyond the walls of this apartment. His two nights on the streets trying to figure out what to do with his freedom barely feel real anymore.

Then he looks, really looks, into Peter’s eyes. They’re full of concern and something soft that he doesn’t know how to interpret. It’s a combination of that and the fact that Peter didn’t ask, he said that he wants. He’s learned that that’s as good as a command and that when it comes down to it, he doesn’t have a choice. But Peter is still looking at him expectantly. With a strength that it takes forever to summon, Sonny nods. A smile immediately breaks over Peter’s face and he stands up. 

“I’ll get you a hoodie and some socks, and your shoes are by the door. Okay?”

He nods again and Peter disappears, only to reappear with an old Fordham sweatshirt that Sonny vaguely recognizes as one he had left behind, a rolled up pair of grey socks, and a plastic wrapped granola bar in what he knows is a vague attempt to get him to eat something. After pulling the hoodie on over his tee shirt and putting the surprisingly thick socks on his feet, he nibbles at the corner of the granola bar. Little chocolate chips in it remind him of being a kid again, handed a lunch box with a PB&J, chips, juice, a granola bar, and sometimes a twinkie if it was a special occasion. Those days were better. Suddenly, a wave of nostalgia for ignorance and bliss overcomes him and he freezes for a long time. The taste of dirt kicked into the air by light-up sneakers floods his tastebuds and summer winds fill his nose. What he wouldn’t give to be a kid again.

He’s still thinking about that, shoes not yet tied, when Peter asks him if he’s ready to go. Quickly, he ties an imperfect knot and gets to his feet. His legs are a little weak with how little use they get, but he manages to keep himself upright and walk over to Peter. The second that they’re close enough, he grabs his hand and clutches it in his own to anchor him. Everything is too big, too scary, too loud in the real world, but Peter will protect him. At least, he’d like to think so. There’s a certain safety with him. 

While they walk, leaving the apartment behind for the first time, Sonny keeps his steps light and fleeting. No noise means that he can’t be caught doing something he shouldn’t, an instinct that follows him even down the crowded New York City sidewalks. Being down here is so much different than watching from the tenth floor of a high-rise apartment building. The people are no longer ants, instead they’re tangible things that make him squeeze his eyes shut when they accidentally brush up against his left arm. It’s overwhelming. Too much. Too close. He tightens his hold on Peter’s hand and presses himself closer into his side. The urge to panic threatens to overwhelm him, but he tempers it down the best he can.

Sonny pretends not to notice the way people are looking at him, messy and nervous. He knows that his face is a little stubbly, his hair in wild waves and half curls, his body shrouded in what had once been a well fitting jacket, but he doesn’t like being stared at like a curiosity as opposed to a human being. All of it is compounded by the bone deep cold that penetrates his clothes to his very soul. In five minutes, he’s shaking and his teeth keep an uneven chattering to add cymbals to the percussion of the thousands of footfalls on the the concrete. He wants nothing more than to go back to his warm windowsill, even when Peter shrugs off his coat to set on Sonny’s shoulders halfway to wherever it is that they’re going. 

The front of the building is unassuming, unlabeled. But inside, the front desk has a man in a police uniform with a computer in front of him. A receptionist, maybe, but a police officer as well? Sonny swallows and looks at the ground. 

“Morning, Counselor. Who’s this?”

Counselor. He rolls the word around in his mouth while his brain tries to figure out the context. Peter isn’t a therapist, he didn’t take any classes like that. Law school only lends well to one field. There he has it: Peter’s either a defense attorney or a prosecutor. For some reason, he can’t imagine him as a defender. It could be the fact that he has the strongest, most by-the-book moral compass, or it could just be Sonny hoping that his only friend isn’t one of those arrogant slime-balls that yell on TV sometimes. 

Both of them are waved through after an answer that Peter whispers to the officer. They walk to an elevator, and despite the fact that it’s warmer in here, Sonny’s still freezing cold. His body simply can’t seem to warm up at all, even packed into the small room with more people. They’re all in suits or police uniforms. Warning bells start to ring in Sonny’s head again that this is a trap and he’s going to get hurt somehow. Every soft ding at a floor makes him tense, waiting for something. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Peter look at him. They’re almost at eye level, a fact that’s easy to forget when he’s usually sitting down.

“This is our floor,” Peter says softly at one of the last stops, guiding Sonny off the elevator and into a pristine hallway that leads into a huge open room decorated in warm colors. Cluttered desks pattern the floor, several more hallways branch off, and a bunch of people are milling around in various states of tired. Shaking hands spill coffee, bruised under eyes swell and hide exhaustion and fear, and the staccato banging of the man in the cage-

The man in the cage. There’s a huge cage in the middle of the room with a leering old man in it, who hits the bars and yells for someone to pay attention to him. Sonny presses himself into Peter’s side and comes close to full-on hiding his face in his chest. He doesn’t want to go in there, he’ll do anything to stay away from it. Cages. Not the cages again. A uniformed officer comes too close and Sonny jerks closer into Peter. He doesn’t want to be here. He wants to go home. What if  _ he’s  _ here?

“It’s okay, Sonny, you’re safe. Come with me, okay? I’m not gonna let anything happen to you.”

He leads Sonny into a smaller room, an office, empty except for a woman with dark hair sitting behind the desk. She looks up at them slowly, not speaking right away. Her eyes are a pretty golden brown. Melted caramel chocolates, smooth and sweet and not at all threatening. When she finally talks, her voice sounds like coffee grinds.

“This must be your friend…?”

“Sonny,” Peter fills in.

There’s no reaching hand in expectancy of a handshake, which slows down Sonny’s heart just a little bit. In general, he’s still terrified out of his mind and wants to go back home. “I’m Olivia,” she says, beckoning them out of the office and calling a blonde woman over as they walk to a room with a huge glass window into it. “And this is Amanda. She just wants to talk to you, if that’s okay.”

He looks up at Peter, who nods reassuringly. 

Amanda joins them and smiles at Sonny, but doesn’t say anything. As they’re let into the room with the window, Peter goes to pull away, but Sonny tightens his hold and looks at him pleadingly. He doesn’t want to be left alone with a stranger, a police officer. After a quick squeeze to his hand, Peter lets go of him. 

“I’ll be right out here, I promise. She’s not gonna hurt you.”

Then he’s being led into the room and Sonny tries to stop the tears beginning to sting at his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My favorite line here is the one that implies that Peter's held onto some of Sonny's stuff for almost ten years


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check updated warnings in the tags

Standing outside the window, Peter feels a little sick to his stomach. Sonny’s curled up in his chair, knees tucked to his chest and eyes wide with fear. Rollins keeps trying to draw him into conversation, but Peter knows he won’t talk. He wants to say something. Instead he just crosses his arms and watches her try and coax words from Sonny. Eventually she gives up and hands him a notepad, asking him if he can write things down for her. She asks him for his full name, which he gives in neat letters that sometimes curve where there should be sharp corners.

Her questions start small and careful, asking him how he knows Peter and how they’re getting along. Then they start to dig a little deeper, with Rollins’ tone getting softer and Sonny’s time between answers getting longer. Why was he on the street? He ran away. Why did he run away? He had to. Was someone hurting him? Vinnie didn’t mean it. Who’s Vinnie?

As Peter watches, Sonny’s face crumples like the loose leaf paper in his hand. Wet reflections of tears drip down his cheeks and when Rollins reaches out to him to comfort, he stands so quickly his chair falls over. He backs up and nearly trips over it in an effort to get away. Between gasping sobs, he holds his hands up in front of his face and backs away from her. Peter can’t not do something.

He throws open the door, a motion he regrets because the sudden movement and noise make Sonny flinch. Rollins glances at him, but her focus goes straight back to Sonny. “I need you to take a deep breath, Sonny. Vinnie can’t get to you here.” Hearing Vinnie’s name makes him flinch again.

“Sonny. Look at me, c’mon,” Peter says. He crouches to look less threatening and holds up his hands as proof that he won’t hurt him. “Breathe. In… out. There you go, you’re okay. You’re safe. Let’s do that again. In…” Focused on Sonny, he doesn’t notice Rollins showing herself out or shutting the door to leave them alone. Sonny’s eyes are wide as saucers with terror so intense that it sends chills down Peter’s spine. He slowly comes closer until he’s within reaching distance. “Can I touch you?” Once he receives a nod, he pulls Sonny into his arms and holds him close while he shakes. “Just keep breathing. I’ve got you, you’re safe. In… out. You’re doing so good.”

They stay there, eventually making their way to the floor, for a long time. Sonny keeps breathing heavily, not quite wheezing. At the very least, he seems much calmer now than he did before. ‘Vinnie’ sticks out in Peter’s mind like a sore thumb as he racks his brain for any connection he can think of. A half-memory of meeting someone by that name, or hearing Sonny mention it when they were in college. He comes up with nothing. And now he’s acutely aware that he can’t ask Sonny about Vinnie again, and he also knows for sure that something very bad happened to him.

He picks Sonny up when he gets to his feet and carries him out of the questioning room. Rollins is standing there looking a little lost, a lot apologetic, and concerned when he gets back in the hallway. She tilts her head in question, to which Peter shakes his own. He doesn’t have to or want to talk about this right now, he just wants to get Sonny home where it’s safe. Just as they get near the elevator, he gets a phone call from Carmen. Swearing, he fumbles with it without dropping Sonny to get it to his ear. 

“Hey, Carmen, I need-“

“You have an emergency meeting with the DA in five minutes, non-negotiable. He’s not happy that you’re not in the office yet.”

He swears under his breath. 

“Rollins, can you do me a favor?”

She comes over hesitantly, watching Peter set Sonny down and fish in his pockets for his house key. “Take Sonny home for me? I’ll text you my address, something came up…”

“Yeah, no problem.”

Rollins reaches toward Sonny, who tucks himself into Peter’s side and grabs at his shirt in white knuckled fists. He pleads wordlessly not to be separated. Christ, it breaks Peter’s heart but he has to go now, and alone. And he knows that Rollins is a good woman, she won’t do anything to intentionally hurt him. Carefully, he pries Sonny’s hands off of him. 

“It’ll be okay, you’re safe with her, she’s a detective. I’ll be back tonight, I promise.”

On a whim, he brings Sonny’s clenched fists to his face and brushes kisses to his knuckles. The small gesture makes Sonny both relax his hands and tighten his shoulders. He’s like a rabbit, poised to flee, shaking, looking like he might burst into tears again at the slightest provocation. If he could, Peter would stay with him, but he can’t.  The longer he stands here, the more trouble he’ll be in. He lingers for a few more seconds before he manages to break away towards the elevator. 

It takes him ten minutes to get to his office. Jack McCoy is already waiting with his arms clasped in front him, voice venomous when he spits, “Nice of you to join me, Mr. Stone.”

“Personal emergency,” he says. “So where’s the fire?”

It turns out that there’s a PR emergency- a ring of NYPD officers in Brooklyn just got busted for a ring of prostitutes, some of which are underage, and they have to call in an outside prosecutor because their ADA was in on it too. All in all, it’s a complete mess, and McCoy thinks that Peter’s the best bet to take them down. The file he’s given is thick, slams on his desk with a heavy thud like when Sonny gets too into his own thoughts and his head falls against the double pane glass of the window. Never a good sound.

“You have three weeks to put together an indictment, at most.”

With that, he’s left to review that case by himself. It’s subdivided into ten officers, all male and fairly young. One name sticks out in particular: Vincent Reyes. He’s the worst of them all it seems, accused of hiring the hookers while supposedly knowing their true ages. When he had them, he supposedly beat the crap out of them if they didn’t do what he wanted. Reyes is not just a dirty cop, he’s a violent one. Those are dangerous. And of course, he’s the only one who’s married. The spouse isn’t named, but Peter jots down a note to have someone to check on the wife in case Reyes takes his anger out on her. 

The longer he looks, the more he thinks that Reyes looks like Amaro. Same bronzed skin, dark eyes, curled hair and pouting lips. The resemblance is so striking that he has to take a moment to stare at the photo close enough to ingrain the differences in his brain. More time than necessary is spent on Reyes’ profile, finding the photos of the bruises on the women and the accounts of him using more force than necessary on the job. His eyes catch on a handwritten note from Reyes’ neighbor saying she worries about what goes on in that house. The poor wife…

Peter sends a quick memo to Carmen to have her send an unbiased cop out to check on the wife. In his time with SVU, he’s seen spouses take the brunt of their husband’s anger too many times. It’s with a bad feeling in his gut and a heavy heart that he moves onto the next file. 

Hours later, toward the end of the work day, Peter’s phone rings with the number saved for his sister Pam’s doctor. He answers it with building anxiety creeping down his spine. “Hello?”

“Mr. Stone, you haven’t been to visit in quite some time, so we haven’t had the chance to discuss how Pamela’s doing.”

“I know, I’m sorry,” he says, running his hand through his hair. “Life’s gotten busy. How is she, is she okay?”

“We’ve had her on suicide watch for the past week after she tried to hang herself with her bedsheet.”

Peter pulls his phone away from his face and looks at it, trying to process that information. For some reason, it just doesn’t sink in. “I’ll be by soon to visit and check up on her. Thanks.” He hangs up and lets his head fall onto his desk, wishing that everything could just disappear.


	5. Chapter 5

Within moments of Peter leaving, Sonny looks around for a bathroom to lock himself in. He’s surrounded by cops, strangers, all unhappy and loud. Someone yells at the man in the cage and Sonny takes an automatic step backwards. 

“Let’s get you out of here, okay? Have you had breakfast?”

He doesn’t respond, which Amanda takes as a no. They go back to the elevator while she tells him about this diner by the precinct that she and her partner go to all the time. Supposedly their pancakes are the sweetest, eggs the fluffiest, coffee the strongest. As she describes the food, his stomach starts to turn. Just listening to her talk about it, he thinks about how it’ll taste, the calories it’ll hold, and how there’ll be people there watching him eat. He hates the very idea of it. But he doesn’t express his opinion and lets Amanda take him outside and into her dark car. She holds open the door of the front seat for him and smiles at him on the drive. Her disposition is friendly, and so are her eyes, but she holds a certain assertiveness in her voice and posture.

“Do you want something to mess with? You’re kinda fidgety.”

In his silence and blank stare, she hands him the key ring Peter gave her. He curls his fingers around it and feels the metal dig into the soft skin of his palm. Having something to hold onto is surprisingly calming, but Sonny still can think of a hundred things he’d rather do than sit in that diner with Amanda for an hour under the pretense of a meal. He knows the truth of the matter is that she’s hoping to get more answers out of him. For the drive, luckily, she doesn’t say anything or look at him much. Not even to tell him that the jingling of the keys in his hands is annoying. It must be, but he can’t bring himself to stop because it makes him feel real, in a way. Something to ground him to his body is a lot more helpful than he thought it would be.

When they get to the diner, Amanda opens his door for him and leads him inside, where a waiter seats them at a booth in the back corner with cracked red vinyl seats. The vibe in the room is that of a bustling morning in the 50s with men in clean suits and waitresses in crisp turquoise skirts. In Sonny’s hands, the laminated menu creaks in protest as he looks at it. Less than a page in, he folds it and sets it aside. He doesn’t want to sit here and read about all the food. Across from him, she looks up at his face and sets her own menu aside.

“Know what you want? My treat.”

He just stares at her. 

Amanda doesn’t try and make him talk, but she presses her lips together until they’re little more than fine lines around her mouth. Anger. He’s made her mad. The very thought has him itching to run outside and keep running and never come back. If it weren’t for Peter, he thinks he’d be tempted to do just that. These streets are unfamiliar and he could never find his way back to the apartment on his own. As much as he needs to get away, he needs Amanda’s help. Hopefully, they won’t be here very long. He presses the edge of the key against one of the cracks in the seat to feel how it sinks into the old yellow foam.

Moments later, a young waitress walks up to them to take their order. Amanda gets herself breakfast and coffee, then looks at Sonny expectantly. He doesn’t say anything. She turns back to the waitress and orders orange juice and chocolate chip pancakes for Sonny, citing something about how they’re one of life’s underrated pleasures. Drinks arrive quickly, and he watches her dump sugar packets and mini creamer cups into her mug and stir it slowly clockwise. The black lightens to a medium brown with little bubbles clustering on the sides. She looks up at him under her lashes and keeps stirring a hypnotic spiral.

“You know, if someone hurt you, that’s not your fault.”

He shrugs and takes a small sip of the juice. It’s sour with a bright taste that he doesn’t think he’s had in a long time. A little smile twitches the corner of his mouth and he drinks more. Before he knows it, he’s had half the glass and it settles a huge weight in his stomach.

“Good, huh?” Sonny looks up at her and sets the juice to the side with sudden shame. Stupid. Greedy. He looks down at his lap and wills himself to be smaller. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re allowed to have that. I’m not gonna take it away from you.”

This feels like a trap. Without looking up, he hears the sound of glass plates clunking on the fake wood of the table. Chocolate chip pancakes, as promised, fill his nose with a delectable aroma. Amanda watches him around bites of omelette, sizing him up like a predator her prey. Her intimidation works because Sonny has an urge to crawl under the table and stay there.

“Have some breakfast, Sonny.”

Under her watchful gaze, he picks up his fork and hashes off a small bite of the pancake. It’s the size of his thumbnail with half a chocolate chip buried in its left side, but it looks insurmountable. He eats it slowly, savors the flavor. Chocolate, another thing he thinks it’s been forever since he’s tasted. An urge to eat the entire plate simmers beneath his skin, but he knows better. Throughout the rest of the meal, he takes a few more bites, but he mostly just turns the pancakes into a very good imitation of mashed potatoes. Meanwhile, Amanda gets through her entire breakfast, watching him like she’s waiting for something. For him to speak, to crack, maybe. He doesn’t talk to her, though, even when she asks him if he needs anything before she takes him back to Peter’s.

Her GPS breaks up the silence with directions, all the way to Peter’s building. She asks if this is the right place and he nods, then leads him to the exact apartment like she doesn’t trust him to get there on his own. It’s hard to blame her when he would probably get a little lost and nervous trying to find it on his own, but now they’re standing outside the door and it doesn’t look she’s planning on leaving. Sonny feels his chest tighten as he fumbles with the keys to go inside. True to his fears, Amanda, slips through the door before he can shut it. He drops the keys and raises his hands in front of his face, backing away from her with wide eyes. The diner was a last meal. She’s going to kill him. Her hands come up, exposing her badge and her gun on her hip and he makes a sound vaguely like a scream. 

“Look at me, Sonny. My hands are empty. I’m not gonna hurt you, I promise. I just wanna talk.” Sonny wants to tell her to leave him alone but the words don’t come. His throat feels like its been stuffed with rubber and he can’t breathe at all. “I got a text, from Peter when he gave me his address. He asked me to stay with you and make sure you’re okay. Do you wanna see the message?”

She holds her phone out to him, screen lit up. He doesn’t reach for it because he doesn’t want her to be able to grab him, but he sees the message on the left side of the screen. The name and number at the top are Peter’s. A little bit of the fear drops, but Sonny still hates the fact that she’s here and his brain is still screaming at him to run.

“I’m gonna sit in the living room, on the couch. You don’t have to do sit with me, or talk to me, or do anything you don’t wanna.”

Eyes still on him, she walks to the grey couch where Sonny sleeps and moves the sheet to the side so she can sit on the cushion. When she finally turns to the TV and puts some reality show on, he steps lightly over to his window sill and climbs into his nest of pillows and the quilt from the couch so he can write. His spiral is cold, untouched since Peter asked him to come in this morning, and the ink on the latest page is long dry. Running his thumb over the letters, none of it smears. Pen in hand, he goes back to his writing and staring out the window. Things are always kind of relaxed mid-morning, when everyone’s at work and there’s no shift changes or lunch breaks for hours to come. Nothing like the start of the day or the end of the night, this is the calm before the storm. Just like that night in the fancy Italian restaurant when he was happy and alive and he thought that he had everything. He did have everything. But that night, everything fell apart.


	6. Chapter 6

Peter doesn’t get home until almost nine, but Rollins texts him that it’s fine, she doesn’t mind. She also mentions that she has a working theory about whatever happened to Sonny, and that he’s been sitting by the bay window writing all day. With an almost smile, he tells her that that’s normal. Things are exactly as she described when the opens the door at his knocking.  Sonny looks up with a deer-in-the-headlights expression before he realizes that it’s just Peter and goes back to his writing.

“Thank you, so much, you have no idea-”

“It’s no problem,” Rollins interrupts. “Can I talk to you in private for a second?”

Probably to explain her theory. He nods and leads her to his room, shutting the door so Sonny won’t be able to hear them. Not that his room is messy, but it’s not the neatest, so he takes a brief moment to straighten up some of the ties tossed carelessly on his bed and the clutter on his nightstand. Both of them keep to their feet in some semblance of professionalism despite the fact that she’s literally standing in his bedroom. She looks, even now, like she’s thinking things over in her mind to try and connect the dots that she’s drawn from a day presumably attempting to coax answers from Sonny.

“He hasn’t said anything,” she starts, “but he’s capable of talking because I caught him humming to himself while he was writing today. So, number one, someone taught him to keep his mouth shut.”

“That I guessed.”

“There’s more. I think that the reason he hasn’t been eating is that he was told that he didn’t deserve it. Or it was used as an incentive to make him do something.”

Both of those things Peter thought about pretty quickly on his own. He wants to be nice, and polite, but he also wants to snap that if she’s just going to state the obvious then she should leave him alone to take care of Sonny. It’s been a long day, without a doubt. The anxiety on the walk, his freak out in the station, how terrified he looked at the prospect of being left alone, it no doubt took a toll on him. All he wants to do is take care of him and hold him and make this all better even though he has no way to know what happened unless Sonny tells him.

“The way he reacted at the precinct, we know that the perp’s name- or nickname- is Vinnie. And I think that whoever Vinnie is, he’s a cop, or at least works with them. Sonny was really jumpy around the unis and when he saw my badge he looked like he was gonna cry.”

“That makes a lot of sense. I’ll see if I can get a last name, but I doubt it. You saw how he shut down,” Peter says. 

Rollins nods and the two of them return to the living room where they say their goodbyes and Peter tells her to get home safe. When they’re alone, Peter sees the tension leave Sonny’s body asluj he settles further into his little nook. He’s still wearing Peter’s coat, wrapped around his body so loosely that it’s almost indistinguishable from the blanket he’s dragged over from the couch. Most days he brings it from his makeshift bed to his window to cover his legs. Probably another layer of self-protection to keep him closed off, to help him feel safe. Peter has so many questions but he doesn’t know how many he’ll ever get an answer to. The name ‘Vinnie’ comes back to mind and a voice in the back of his head says that it could be short for Vincent. Vincent Reyes. It quickly gets crushed by a louder voice saying he shouldn’t try and make connections where there aren’t any.

He feels Sonny’s eyes on him as he slings his briefcase onto the dining room table and walks into the kitchen. Exhaustion has settled into his bones, but he can’t go to sleep right now, not with the Brooklyn case’s file weighing heavy on his conscience and his table. Beer isn’t strong enough tonight, he thinks as he pours himself some of the nice whiskey he keeps in the back corner of his cabinet. It’s his emergency drink. He doesn’t even bother with ice tonight, there’s no point. Long days like this have a habit of making him feel like he could sink into the floor and not give half a damn.

“She was nice.”

Those three words are so soft timid, croaked in a voice that’s obviously gone unused for a long time. Peter turns around slowly, finding Sonny’s focus out the window. His voice. It’s been a long time since he’s heard it, deep and rough like crunching leaves in autumn, but the Staten accent is audible even in just one sentence. At a loss for words, Peter just stares at him waiting for him to say something else, but it becomes clear that he won’t when Sonny goes back to writing almost frantically. His letters are all looping and curling around each other into one long line of ink that doesn’t quite stay in the lines on his paper.

“Yeah, Rollins is a good cop,” Peter answers, and focuses in on his work.

According to the officer that checked on Reyes’ house, he was home alone and refused to say anything about a wife of any kind. They had to leave with no visual confirmation, and he knows before he even reads the memo he knows that they don’t have enough for a warrant. A hunch isn’t legal standing. Peter puts his head in his hands and takes a deep breath before digging into the witness statements and the photos of the scenery. Reyes has a large dog cage in the living room where the bust was made, but he doesn’t own a dog. One of the detectives had the sense to get it swabbed for DNA and they found traces of human blood and other fluids in it, all from the same person. He feels sick to his stomach thinking about a person being curled up behind the metal. A human being, treated like a disobedient dog.

He can already hear the defense attorney putting together explanations. According to the paperwork, all of the accused retained the same one: Rita Calhoun. She and Stone met once, a long time ago, during a really difficult case that ended with a deep hatred and a mutual respect between them. The woman’s a gifted attorney, and her pro bono work has made her a hero, but those who can pay her steep fees can and have gotten away with the worst crimes humanity has to offer. This case will be a nightmare from the get-go, and if Peter knows anything about Calhoun, it’s that he’ll be drowning in motions for a while before they get to the actual trial. He makes a note to find out who’s paying for her so he can establish who’s the low man on the totem pole. If he can get one of them to flip, he could bring all of them down. It’s just going to take some work.

“Can I try again tomorrow?”

Peter blinks and turns back to Sonny. “What?”

“Tomorrow. Can I try to talk to Amanda again? I wanna- she seems nice.”

Progress. If he wasn’t afraid to ruin this moment, Peter would stand up and pull Sonny into his arms, hold him until it all goes away because Sonny’s trying and for the love of all that’s good in the world, he’s talking. For a second, all of the disgusting facts of the case are gone because at this moment, Peter’s chest is warm with hope.

“Yeah. I won’t be able to stay with you, I have to work, but will you be okay if I drop you off at the precinct?”

Something dark flits across Sonny’s face so quickly that Peter isn’t sure he sees it, but then he turns back to his notebook with a nod and Peter’s left to return to his case and suppress his disgust at the depravity.


	7. Chapter 7

“I’m just a phone call away, and if you can’t reach me, you’re safe with the detectives. I’ll be home late tonight, but I dug up my spare for under the mat and there’s food in the fridge.”

Sonny nods and squeezes Peter’s hand before they split ways. The building is still huge and imposing, but Amanda is waiting outside- Peter must’ve texted her so that he won’t have to wander around on his own. Relief washes over him like a warm cup of hot cocoa, which he suddenly realizes how much he misses. As he thinks about the taste, how much he misses it and wants to have some again, his feet carry him up to Amanda. She smiles at him and beckons him inside without a word. As soon as they get into the building, he leans into her so that their shoulders brush, helping him feel a little bit less alone as they brush past cops that Sonny still flinches at the sights of. Dark blue, heavily starched uniforms skim Sonny’s arm and he leans away. The texture is too familiar.

They go to the same room as last time, where a yellow legal pad is already waiting for him with a ballpoint pen that looks like the kind that CEOs keep in little glass cups on their desks. It’s heavy in his hand, the ink thick when he presses it to the top of the paper to test it. Out of habit, he scribbles his name in messy cursive in the top left corner of the very first page. Amanda watches him carefully as he does it, and offers him another reassuring smile as he gets comfortable in the cheap plastic chair.

“Remember, you don’t have to answer any questions you don’t want to. Okay?” She waits for him to give her a small thumbs up. “Okay. So before you moved in with Peter, where’d you live?”

He takes his time to write down his answer as neatly as he can manage. Old house, cream paint and green shutters. Front yard, backyard, two stories. Ratty carpet floors. When Sonny turns his notebook around for her to read, she smiles and praises him for doing the right thing. It makes him feel like a dog, which in turn raises memories he’d rather not explore. Sonny gestures for her to move onto the next question before the panic thrumming at the base of his skull spreads.

“Do you know the address?” No, he never has, and he couldn’t find his way back if he wanted to. “That’s okay, Sonny. Were you there from the time you dropped out of school until you moved in with Peter?” Yes, he was.

That dinner returns to mind again, and suddenly he’s writing it all down. How  _ he _ pulled out Sonny’s chair and pushed it in for him. The bottle of rosé they shared over bread and butter while their meals were cooked. Pasta Carbonara, the last time Sonny ate a full meal and he hadn’t even finished it because there was so much food and he couldn’t. It wasn’t boxed. There was no need,  _ he _ told him. And Sonny hadn’t understood, just laughed and agreed to share dessert. Sweet ice cream shared over espresso shots and loving kisses that made his chest warm and his lips tingle. Things had been so good until afterwards,  _ he _ drove Sonny back to his house instead of school. He asked why and all he got was a command to shut up. From there, Sonny only went outside once before he escaped.

“So you were in a relationship with V- the man who hurt you.”

Writing the word down takes a lot more out of Sonny than he thought it would. Seven letters. Lines, curves and angles. That’s it. While he slowly spells it all out, he can see Amanda watching him closely over the top of the paper. He turns it around for her to read the jagged letters and drops his head down to try and hide his face from her. There’s nothing romantic about what had, for many, been the best day of their lives.

“You were married,” she says, and Sonny nods. “Okay, so the one time you left…?”

He writes that it was to sign the certificate. The underpaid, overworked desk clerk hadn’t been able to recognize the pleading look in his eyes. But his attempts to get her attention didn’t go unnoticed and Sonny felt the wrath later that night when they got home. As he writes down that it was to sign the papers, he feels the ghosts of bruising hands on him. Burning into his skin in a way that makes bile rise in the back of his throat at what’s no more than a distant memory.

“Just to dot our i’s and cross our t’s, you’re saying that your husband hurt you?”

Nodding, Sonny starts toying with the corner of his paper to have something to do with his hands. He can’t sit still. Her blue eyes bore into his movements, paying far closer attention than she has any right to. While she’s not Peter, Sonny still trusts her, so he tries not to let it get to him too much when she watches him so closely.

“Can you describe what he did to you, Sonny?”

There’s so much that he doesn’t know where to start. At first it was just the yelling, where he would be told not to do something. Then it was the withholding food, telling him he didn’t need to get fat. Then it was the smacking, the beating, the dog cage and the basement, the way he snuck out of the back door. He could say all of that, but instead, he just says that there was so much that he doesn’t know how long he’d sit here writing it.

Right as Amanda opens her mouth to ask another question, the door swings open. It’s  _ him _ . Sonny’s heart drops to his feet and he can’t seem to move. 

“Rollins, we need you.”

“I’m in the middle of something-”

“Now!”

Sonny brings his hands up to cover his ears, shutting his eyes as Amanda gets up and leaves the room. How did  _ he _ find him? Stupid question. He’s in a police building, they probably called. The last thing he wants is to go back. God, the cage. The dark. The yelling and the screaming and the pain and the everything. Sonny’s chest is caving in and he can’t breathe anymore. He needs Peter, Peter will protect him, Peter will make  _ him _ go away. At some point, he winds up on the ground, holding his head so tightly that it physically hurts.

He doesn’t want to go back. He doesn’t want to go back. He doesn’t want to go back. Sonny’s lungs are bursting in his chest and he can hear  _ him _ berating and screaming and yelling and it’s all so loud and so much. He can’t do anything but silently beg to be forgiven, to be left alone. The world is too small as he fights to breathe. It’s  _ him _ because Sonny couldn’t get far enough away. He’s going to die now, he’s going to be killed. It’s been forever since he’s prayed, but he’s praying now to whatever benevolent god might be up there that he dies before he goes back.

“You alright sir?”

There are calloused hands on his forearms and he jerks back so hard that his head cracks on the floor.

“Hey- hey, hey, you’re okay. You’re okay. Someone call a bus!”

He makes the mistake of opening his eyes and it’s  _ him.  _ Staring down, right there, holding Sonny in place and he freezes. His head hurts, he can’t breathe, and he’s frozen, unable to move. The hands move so one cups the back of his head and the other rests on his bicep. Can’t move. Can’t breathe. Want out. Want out. Looking into  _ his  _ eyes and wishing he had the voice to beg for his life.


	8. Chapter 8

Barely an hour into the workday, and Benson is already calling him. It’s hard to keep the annoyance out of his town when he answers it. “Is this an emergency, Lieutenant? I have a lot of work to do.” He doesn’t explain that it’s because he wants to go home in time to visit Pam before dinner.

“Sonny’s en route to Bellevue with Rollins and Amaro, thought you might want to know.”

In less than a second, Peter’s out of his seat and pulling his coat on as he leaves his office, just barely pausing to scribble a note to hand to Carmen to make sure that no one bothers him while he’s there. He hears the panic in his own voice as he asks why, how, if he’s going to be okay.

“Rollins was questioning him. She got called out by Amaro for an interrogation, and when he walked by a few minutes later Sonny was on the floor, having a full-blown panic attack. Hit his head pretty hard while he was freaking out, and hyperventilated his way out of consciousness.”

He thanks her before he hangs up to call an Uber to the hospital, hoping to get there before Sonny wakes up surrounded by strangers and potentially restrained. That’s just asking for disaster. If he were in that position, waking up in a sterile white room with his arms belted down and with unfamiliar faces in his personal space, he knows he’d lose it. Pile that on top of the trauma of whatever Sonny’s been through, and in the aftermath of a panic attack, and Peter knows he has to be there.

It seems to take an eternity to get to the hospital, but the clock on his phone says that it’s only thirteen minutes between the time he slides into the backseat of the Subaru and when he tumbles out to run into the ER demanding to know where Dominick Carisi is. The nurses just tell him to get in line, which he does dutifully despite his urge to argue. Actual people in need of medical treatment should come before his desire to see Sonny, but at the same time, he has this need to find him and stand by his side and tell him that everything is going to be okay even if he’s not so sure that that’s true. The line crawls by as people are sent through triage with their bleeding arms and their clammy faces. All of them need help, but Peter can’t bring himself to care when Sonny’s somewhere here, needing his help. 

“I need to get back to see a patient immediately.”

“What’s their name?”

This is too slow, far too slow. Peter has to repeat Sonny’s name twice to be understood.

“Relationship?”

Now’s not the time, but he wonders what their relationship is. Back in college, it had been weird. They were best friends, but there were these moments where it seemed like they had more. Late night studying where Sonny would lay in between Peter’s legs against his chest so that they could read at the same time. Peter would feed them both, bites of shitty takeout and 99 cent ramen between pages. Sometimes they’d share clothes, even if Peter was always a size bigger than Sonny. Many nights passed in the same bed when they were too tired or too cold to part ways. Things were questionable then, but now? It’s a different wheelhouse. Peter always hoped he’d come back. Explain himself, or say he was sorry, but he didn’t want them to cross paths again like this.

“I’m the Manhattan ADA and my detectives have reason to suspect that he’s a victim,” he says, which isn’t technically a lie. “He should be with Detectives Rollins and Amaro from Manhattan SVU, they’ll vouch for me.”

She does, in fact, have Amaro come to the front counter to wave him in before he can go to Sonny’s room. As they walk, he learns that Sonny isn’t awake yet and the doctors are going to do a more thorough exam to document the abuse that ‘Vinnie’ put him through once he’s conscious to provide consent. He asks for more specifics on why Sonny freaked out, and Nick shakes his head.

“He was fine when I pulled Rollins. Few minutes later, I walk by and he’s on the floor losin’ it.”

“Did you approach him?”

“Yeah,” Amaro says, stopping in front of a bay and pulling the curtains to let Peter in. “I grabbed his arms to get his attention and he slammed his head into the floor. Opened his eyes… the second he saw me, he got all… he went limp. Like a ragdoll. Just stared at me and kept hyperventilating until he passed out. Bus got there a few minutes later.”

Sonny’s lying in the bed, eyes shut and hooked up to a heart rate monitor that beeps slowly to the tune of his heartbeat. According to Rollins’ voice that Peter barely manages not to tune out, he’ll be up soon. He fainted from the high concentration of carbon dioxide due to his hyperventilating. It could have gone on for several minutes before Amaro even noticed that something was wrong.

“When you called out Rollins, how did you do it? Did Sonny see you? Hear you?”

With a strange expression, Amaro tilts his head to the side. “I leaned into the room, told her to come help. She said to wait, I said we needed her now.”

“Your tone?”

“It may have been aggressive.”

That’s when Peter’s brain helpfully supplies how much Amaro and Reyes look alike, and that ‘Vinnie’ could be short for Vincent. It would make sense; Sonny’s fear of cops, why he would be triggered by Amaro’s apparent anger, the fact that he seemed paralyzed when he saw Amaro up close while he was in a fit of panic. All of it is completely circumstantial, but Peter gets the feeling he isn’t far off the mark.

He pushes it all aside for later and comes to Sonny’s bedside to hold his hand. It’s cold like always, but completely limp. The veins under the skin of his wrist run purple and blue, fragile and thin. Under the white clinical sheets, Sonny looks more like a cadaver than a breathing person. Without his usual layers, he looks so much more sickly. Bruises under his eyes from not enough sleep, hollowed cheeks. A thin pink scar runs across Sonny’s neck that Peter doesn’t remember from when they were younger. It must be from Vinnie. He can’t help thinking that Sonny’s a victim right now.

“Did you get anything, Rollins?”

“Uh, yeah. Vinnie abducted him, and he lived in an old house the entire time, no clue where. Before he got away, he only left once to sign a marriage certificate. Legally, he’s married to Vinnie. He didn’t get to telling me what was done to him before Amaro pulled me, but he said it was a lot.”

Standing there, she keeps her arms crossed over her chest. Peter knows that this has to be killing her almost as much as it is him. As long as he’s known her, she’s been an emotional detective, one who takes things personally. Today’s episode wasn’t her fault, but seeing Sonny panic twice in as many days has to be devastating for her, too. Before they can continue, Sonny’s eyes start to open with pinprick pupils and a lost look.

“Sonny?”

He squeezes Peter’s hand and looks up at him like he’s someone worthy of love. They don’t need to say anything to understand that neither of them are going anywhere anytime soon. Rollins says she’ll get the doctor, letting Amaro in on her way out. As soon as Sonny catches sight of him, he tightens his hold on Peter so much that it hurts and his heart rate starts to skyrocket again.

“Hey, shh, look at me,” Peter says, smoothing Sonny’s hair off his forehead and gently turning his face to meet his eyes again. “You’re safe. That’s Nick Amaro, he’s not gonna hurt you. He’s here to help.”

The look on Sonny’s face, accusatory and disbelieving, breaks Peter’s heart. If his hunch is right and Reyes is Vinnie, then Sonny probably thinks that Amaro is him and he’s going to have to go back home with him. More torture, more abuse. 

“I promise that he won’t hurt you. No one will, I’ll keep you safe.”

Amaro shakes his head and raises his hands with clear frustration on his face. Sonny flinches and Peter fights the urge to snap at Amaro for not keeping his face neutral, for acting like it’s a personal vendetta. “I’ll be in the hallway, Rollins will be back soon,” he says bitterly, and leaves the room.

Once he’s gone, Sonny shuts his eyes and as Peter watches, he starts to silently cry. If there was something, anything he could do to make this all better, he would. In the span of a month, the world has gotten so small around him. First, Sonny shows up a mess in need of help. Then things are going downhill with Pam and he definitely won’t have time to visit her today. And on top of it, he just caught the biggest case of his career and it’s a mess of Brooklyn officers who’ve done things that could make corpses shiver. Everything is overwhelming right now, and it looks like it’s not going to slow down anytime soon. He brushes the tears from Sonny’s face and makes a silent promise to protect him and keep him safe.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do see your comments, I promise! I just don't get notified when you post them and I keep forgetting to respond but I promise that I see them and they make my heart so happy <3 if you shoot me a tumblr ask I promise I respond to those lol but thank you so much for your kind words :D

“Sonny, they just wanna make sure you’re okay.” Sonny shakes his head, holding Peter’s hand as tightly as tightly as he can in an effort to convince him. “I’ll be right here the whole time.”

Home. He wants to go back home and get out of this hospital. It brings back memories of the harsh scent of antiseptic and bandages wound sloppily around cuts from broken glass, and he wants to escape the too-clean smell and the way he’s being looked at like he’s broken. Being poked and prodded and photographed is something he’d rather die than go through again. 

“Please? It’ll help our case-“

Once again, Sonny shakes his head, and Peter drops it with an upset, tight-lipped expression. 

After the doctor clears Sonny in the afternoon, he’s given back his clothes and told that he can go home. Peter hasn’t left the whole time, Amanda left when Sonny was cleared, and he hasn’t seen  _ him _ since the moment that the storm of anger and pain left the room. It’s been recommended that he get counseling or something, but he doesn’t want to do that. That means he has to be alone with someone for an hour, no Peter, who he doesn’t know so that they can tell him to go back to where he came from.

He gets to his feet a little shakily and pulls back on the thick fabric so Peter can lead him out of the hospital and hail them a cab back home. The silence that weighs on them both is suffocating, not comforting as it usually is. He holds open the door for Sonny, and in the back seat, lets him hold his hand as he rapidly types on his phone. That’s what he does the entire ride home, barely glancing at up. So Sonny stares out the window at the passing city. Hundreds of vibrant cars, thousands of people walking and riding like they can’t even begin to understand what other people go through.

On the way home, water starts to come down on top of the cab, tinny drumming on the roof that slides down the windows. His free hand presses to the cool glass, feeling it leech the warmth from his skin as crystals drip and reflect the streets in a trypophobia-inducing patterns. Imperfection made beautiful. He sees himself reflected back in the tinted window, more ghost than man by now. If he were to drift away like a ghost, maybe it would be easier. Ghosts don’t cry, or feel pain, or panic, or bleed. Nonexistence sounds so peaceful. Tempting. Sonny’s eyelids feel heavy, but not like he’s sleepy. It’s more like exhaustion, something that slugs heavy through his blood as thick as mercury and turns his limbs to useless lead. 

It takes so much out of him to stand up and follow Peter back to the apartment where he immediately grabs his notebook and settles in the window to start writing again. His hands shake so badly that all he makes are jagged lines. Already he knows that it’ll be illegible in the morning and until the end of days. Still silent, Peter starts bumbling in the kitchen for a half-hearted attempt at a dinner. He’s upset, that much is clear from the way he slams drawers and clatters his pots onto the counter.  Every angry noise makes the spring in Sonny’s back coil down tighter. In only a matter of time, Peter is going to snap. He’ll yell, get mad, and then it’s back to the streets or worse. Sonny ducks his head down and tries harder to concentrate to write but it still all comes out jumbled.

“I’m making boxed macaroni,” Peter says flatly. “Do you want a bowl?”

“Are you mad at me?”

Peter sets the little cardboard box down in what seems like a planned motion, carefully gentle to keep it from making a loud noise. He walks over slowly with his hands raised, palms flat and open with his fingers spread. When he’s close enough, he sits down with him and brushes their arms together. “No. Never. I’m just stressed out right now, that’s all.”

“‘S it my fault?”

“No,” he answers, a little too quickly. “Just some family and work stuff. I’m not upset at you,  I promise.”

He leans in and presses his lips in a tentative kiss to Sonny’s temple before he gets up and goes back to the kitchen. Every movement is quieter now, normal as opposed to the annoyed banging when he started cooking. The sound of the dry noodles pouring into the pot is like pebbles rolling over each other into the cactus planter in the old backyard, filling in the ugly dirt where the plants Sonny tried to cultivate withered and died over the summer when he couldn’t get to them for two weeks. They were supposed to be roses, red and pink. The seed packets were a gift after a long night, one of  _ his _ small kindnesses that almost gave Sonny something to live for. A bright pop of color he could see from the kitchen window, or put in a vase on in the living room. Life where there was otherwise little more than a dark hell and a house of secrets.

Suddenly, he’s sucked into writing and he can’t stop with the words that get mixed up and jumbled and don’t make much sense but evoke the exact mood he needs to explain, to get his point across before whatever spirit possessing him drops the flow of thought onto the paper. More than once, he presses the pen into one spot for too long and ink bleeds in a puddled stain that makes his fingers sticky. It sinks into the wells of his fingerprint, distracting him until Peter taps his shoulder and offers him a bowl. The smell of artificial cheese powder in a sickening neon yellow-orange assaults his senses but at the same time makes his mouth water. He’s hungry.

“Here.”

“I’m not hungry.”

Peter stares at him for a long time, holding out the food like he’s hoping Sonny will change his mind. Their stare-down lasts a while before he gives up and sets it on the table, taking his own into the living room to eat on the couch, something he never does. “Come sit with me. Like old times.” 

Old times, back when they were roommates. Sonny’s body moves faster than his brain does, dragging him over to lay on the couch with Peter, back to his chest and warm and secure in his arms. It feels familiar and comforting. He keeps writing, since the page he’s on now is just about the roses anyways. While he still doesn’t want Peter to read it, at least this way if glances are caught, it isn’t the end of the world. Settling his way back into familiarity almost makes him forget the last eight years. As he focuses on writing, he barely notices the few forkfuls of cheap pasta that Peter feeds him. Everything narrows down to the warmly lit room, Peter’s heartbeat at the nape of Sonny’s neck, and the gentle scratch of the pen.

“I’m going to bed,” Peter says, kissing Sonny’s cheek with a tenderness that he’s missed before easing off the couch and bringing his dishes to the kitchen on his way.

Left alone, Sonny gets tired before long and packs his things away for the night. Sleep won’t come easy tonight, but at least it’s before midnight and maybe he can get a few hours in. Already he knows that he won’t be going anywhere near the precinct tomorrow. Here is safe, here he won’t get hurt. The door is locked, and Sonny takes a moment to close the curtains on the window before he curls up on the couch for a fitful sleep that only lasts a couple of hours before he wakes up unable to breathe.


	10. Chapter 10

Peter doesn’t know what time it is when he wakes up to the most heart-wrenching sound he thinks he’s ever heard in his life. In the seconds it takes to identify the sound as a sob, he’s wide awake and stumbling out of bed to check on Sonny. To make a sound like that, something had to have happened and he worries for a moment that someone’s broken in. It wouldn’t be the first time that an abuser stalks an escaped victim. On a whim, he grabs the baseball bat by his bed and creeps from his room with it over his shoulder. He looks around the living room for a threat, but all he sees is Sonny, head in his hands, shaking. Peter drops the bat, which makes a noise loud enough that Sonny jumps and covers his ears.

He hurries over to him and kneels on the floor in front of the couch. “Look at me, Sonny. You’re safe. Just breathe with me. In… out… there you go. Can I touch you?” Sonny shakes his head frantically. “Okay, that’s okay. Keep breathing. Breathe.”

“He c-came back f-f-f-for m-me,” Sonny cries.

Hearing the tremor in his voice brings an indescribable pain to the forefront of Peter’s own mind. There’s nothing quite like seeing someone you’d do anything for break down in front of you and not know how to help. Maybe counseling, but he doesn’t know how he can get Sonny to do that. It’s taken him a month to get this far, although it seems that now that the floodgates have opened he can’t seem to stay calm for more than a few hours at a time.

“I won’t let him near you, baby,” Peter says before he can filter his words.

“Gonna hurt m-me again. S-s-said th-that…”

He doesn’t finish his sentence because he’s crying so hard.

“It was a nightmare. Just a dream. He can’t hurt you anymore. It’s all gonna be okay.”

The truth is that Peter doesn’t know if it’s going to be okay. In the span of two days, Sonny’s had two panic attacks and is on the precipice of a third. Maybe it would have been better not to bring him into SVU. As soon as that thought goes through his head, Peter’s ashamed of himself. He knows that this isn’t Sonny’s fault, and that it’s good to get help, but at the same time this is destroying both of them from the inside out. It had been a good night, in spite of everything, until this. They were making progress. Sonny let him hold him without flinching, instead he had relaxed and trusted in a way that it doesn’t look like he’s been able to do since their last night together in the dorms. If only they could go back there, go back to everything being simple and easy. As simple and easy as things can get for two young men in law school.

Between one moment and the next, suddenly Sonny is in a mess of shaking limbs in Peter’s lap, holding his shirt like a lifeline and burying his face into the faded heather fabric. Slowly, Peter wraps his arms around him and holds him there, cocoons him from the world and rocks them back and forth a little in what he hopes is soothing. When finals got overwhelming, this and a pint of ice cream always fixed everything. Peter even has a moment where he asks himself if he still keeps a pint of Phish Food in the freezer, since it’s his own consolation prize at the end of the day. The answer is no, he finished it off months ago and hasn’t had a loss since. Not that that would fix this anyways, or even come close. This is a brand new type of mess, one that he’s never dealt with before and doesn’t know how. He’s used to seeing the devastation in the aftermath of SVU cases, but he’s always gotten to go home and live on because it’s never happened to him or a loved one. Now he understands the strain, the stress, the parents who don’t want to put their children through a long trial. If they ever catch Vinnie, Peter sure as hell doesn’t want to ask Sonny to take the stand to say everything that happened to him and then get cross-examined by a bitter, snarky defense attorney. He wants better than that for him.

“What do you need right now? How do I make this better?”

He asks because he doesn’t know, and he hates that he has to acknowledge that. This whole being an adult thing, he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do or how to make everything turn out okay. Certainly not this. The carnage left behind, the broken pieces of a once confident man, he doesn’t know how to help. Although everything about this is hard, that’s the worst part. He wants to take all the pain away, or at least lessen it, but he just doesn’t know how. 

“Stay.”

That, that Peter can do. 

“I’m not going anywhere.”

True to his word, neither of them move despite the fact that Peter’s legs are falling asleep, he’s exhausted, and it’s almost two in the morning according to clock mounted on the wall. Through the gap in the thick curtains, Peter can faintly see the bright lights of those coming home from a long night of partying on a weekday, the mark of someone who doesn’t know any better and won’t until something happens to them that can never be undone. Too many times, he’s looked at the story of the party girl who took everything within reach to make the pain inside go away, and it got her left in a back alley with her tights on inside out, makeup smeared, an clothes torn. People are cruel. He doesn’t get why, or how to fix it.

Who in their right mind would ever hurt Sonny? He’s always had a heart of gold. If someone needed money, a friend, a place to stay or a shoulder to cry on, Sonny would have been there because that’s the man he is. Was. So much has changed that Peter doesn’t know if he’s capable of being so loving anymore because he’s a mess within an hour of leaving the house every time.

“Do you think you can go back to sleep?”

“Don’t leave me.”

Peter shushes Sonny gently when his whole body tenses, white hot with fear and sweat on the back of his neck. “Not going to. If you can sleep, let’s go back to my bed. I’ll tuck you into the covers and you can get a good night’s rest. I’ll pull up a chair, you won’t have to worry about a thing.”

He doesn’t hear a protest, so Peter stands up on his pins-and-needles legs to help Sonny walk unsteadily to the bedroom. The tangled sheets and old blanket look even sadder on the couch without someone to occupy the makeshift bed not meant to last for forever. He can’t help wondering how much better will Sonny feel with a real mattress under his back instead of lumpy springs and stiff fabric meant for life, not a cheap mimicry of death. When they get to his bedroom, he helps Sonny ease into the bed and tucks the sheets around him. He turns to grab a chair when he’s stopped by a hand grabbing his wrist.

“Stay?”

“I’m getting a chair,” Peter reminds gently.

“No- I- stay. Sleep.”

Sonny lifts the edge of the blankets in a clear invitation. In the scarce lighting of the room, his eyes glitter with leftover tears that threaten to spill at any moment. A voice in the back of his head says that Peter should be careful about this, that it could change things, but he’s too tired to deal with it. He shuts his thoughts down and climbs into bed, keeping a respectful distance. As he’s drifting off to sleep, he’s vaguely aware of Sonny pressing them together and the fact that his own arms wrap around Sonny’s bony and fragile body.


	11. Chapter 11

Light coming through the slatted, half-open blinds in Peter’s bedroom is what wakes Sonny up. The little digital clock on the nightstand says it’s just past seven, the latest that Sonny’s slept in a long time. Peter’s clock. He realizes suddenly that Peter’s holding him close with deadweight arms that he struggles to slip out of. In the back of his mind he remembers the nightmare, remembers asking Peter to stay with him and sleep. All night, they shared a bed and Sonny slept through it easily. Peacefully, even. His movements are jerky and uncoordinated as he fumbles through the stuff on the coffee table in the living room for his spiral. This time when he settles by the window, it’s more of a restless existence. Twitching fingers itching to write but words that don’t come. He draws the curtain back and watches the fog roll down the busy street like foam clouding people’s thoughts and judgement.

It seems stuffy inside and Sonny starts fumbling for the window latch, even though there isn't one. Right, tenth floor of a huge apartment building, of course the windows don’t open. Just in case someone gets an idea and crawls out of the pane to fall to a quick death on the hood of the parked red Sedan below. At least the blood would match the paint, he thinks, a lot more seriously than he probably should. The fact remains that he needs air, so he scribbles a note on an empty page of his notebook, rips it out, and leaves it on his window seat so he can leave. He won’t go far, not when he knows who might be out there, but the fire escape leads all the way up to the roof. Sonny takes the elevator up to the top floor and climbs the last flight onto the flat-top concrete. A short ledge, maybe two or three feet, rims the entire roof, some poor attempt at preventing people from falling or jumping to their deaths.

Spiral in one hand, pen in the other, Sonny finds himself sitting on the ledge with his legs dangling over the street. His foot looks bigger than the hurried yellow cab that honks past. From here, he has a different vantage point of the same street and it gets him writing fast. It’s all about perspective, everything is. In the gram scheme of things, there are people that’ve gone through worse, so really he has no right to be such a mess over all of this. Birds whizz past at eye level, and once he gets used to their sudden appearance, it feels freeing to be up here with something that can come and go as it pleases with no thought to where it’s been or where it’s going next. He’d like to be like that.

“Sonny?”

He flinches at the sudden sound of Peter’s voice, leaning backwards so he doesn’t pitch forward and fall to his death. If he did, he isn’t sure how much he’d mind.

“Sonny, don’t do this. Please don’t. We can get through this, it doesn’t have to end like this.”

“What?”

Unsure what he’s talking about, Sonny keeps trying to write despite the hairs rising on the back of his neck at being watched. An urge rises to drop his pen, just to see it fall down all fifteen stories of the high rise, obliterated when it hits the ground, squashed into a neat plastic pancake leaking ink on the pavement. His fingers twitch. 

“Get off the ledge. Please.”

“I’m not going to jump,” he says lameley, but still comes back onto the roof where his feet slide a little without traction. He doesn’t fall, and now that he’s away from the ledge, all it would do is give him scraped knees and hands. When he looks up at Peter, he sees the color-draining fear on his face. “I wouldn’t tell you I was coming up here if that’s what I was gonna do.”

“That’s not reassuring.”

Peter holds out a hand for Sonny to take as he leads him back into the building and down to the tenth floor. The door is unlocked and hung open, no doubt left that way when Peter saw the note and ran up to the roof because he got it in his head that Sonny was planning something. Does he look that fragile, he wonders, that he seemed on the edge of an action so drastic? In truth, he’s been thinking about it, but he wouldn’t go through with it without a proper goodbye and an assurance that he wouldn’t be caught.

“Don’t ever do that again,” Peter says, cold and angry and all sharp metallic edges. “You scared me.”

“I needed some air.”

He slams his hands down on the marble countertop, hard. Sonny takes a step back and his hands start to shake at his sides. The look in Peter’s eyes is raw. “What if you fell? What if you jumped? You can’t- you can’t do that. I woke up in bed alone, and… I don’t know. I was terrified out of my mind when I saw that note, Sonny.”

Of all the things to say, Sonny says the worst.

“You don’t know what it’s like to be scared out of your mind. I didn’t hit you. I didn’t lock you in a cage. I didn’t starve you. I didn’t make you feel like no one gave a damn about you. I didn’t do anything to you. You have no right to say that you’ve been scared. I’ve had worse.”

“I thought I was going to lose you again! I love you, Sonny, I always have, and I can’t go through that again!”

Alone, his words should make Sonny’s heart flutter. The whole reason he got together with  _ him _ was because he thought he’d never have a ghost of a chance with Peter. He got tired of trying, of waiting, of hoping that he might get somewhere. To think that maybe he was loved back, maybe he has the slightest chance now, it should make him ecstatic.

But instead, his brain locks onto everything else. The angry voice, the loud sound of hands on the table, the yelling. It’s too much. His thoughts flicker back to curled up on his side, apologizing and begging for it to be over. Then watching through bumpy iron strings at a woman yelling as she’s slammed down against the granite counter and  _ he  _ yelled at her to shut up. It overwhelms and Sonny fights to stay calm, to hold on control. The memories of Peter’s voice telling him to breathe stay quiet in the background until they become real and tender arms wrap around him. He didn’t realize how much he’s missed being held with no expectations or ulterior motives.

“I love you,” Peter is saying, but not just once. He repeats it like a mantra, a chant, a thousand year old summoning of things that can’t even begin to be described or understood. The words come like a feeling. Like a song. Something intangible, immaterial, and still the best thing he’s ever tasted like strawberries and sunshine on the tip of his tongue. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

And that’s even better, like lifting a thousand pounds off his chest in four words. Bubbles in his chest roll up and simmer and he smiles into Peter’s neck and feels like a human worthy of something for the first time in forever.

He leans back just enough to smile up at Peter, who looks so soft and affectionate in a way he’s never seen before. Sonny doesn’t know if anyone’s ever looked at him like that before, and doesn’t that just make his heart hurt a little? The arms around him have moved, hands resting on his hips lightly like he’s made of gossamer and might collapse in on himself if Peter holds him too tightly. His own hands are still flat against Peter’s chest, so he moves to let his fingers rest in the soft hairs at the base of his neck. Holding back, reciprocating, being given an opportunity to love back.

It doesn’t occur to him to do anything other than study Peter’s face. Smooth skin with more lines in it than he remembers, pretty green eyes with thin brown lashes and lips that curve up a little in the corners with the beginnings of a smile. Sonny tilts his head up and then, suddenly, they’re kissing. Soft lips and something warm that makes him feel more alive. Slow. Easy. Safe. When they break apart, Sonny opens his eyes and Peter’s are still shut. 


	12. Chapter 12

Dragging himself away from Sonny to get ready for the day takes a lot more strength than Peter thought it would. As he gets dressed, his brain slowly drifts from the emotional morning to the Brooklyn officers. Arrangements with the lawyer start this morning, for all of the officers, ending with Reyes. Peter really isn’t looking forward to dealing with Calhoun for eight hours straight, but then again, she probably doesn’t want to spend her day going toe-to-toe with him either. He takes his time staring in the mirror as he does up his tie. In less than an hour, he feels like he’s changed so much because of something so simple as taking the initiative he wishes he did years ago. 

On the way out the door, he kisses Sonny’s cheek and tells him he’ll be home by six. He gets a genuine smile on his way out, and it feels like it’s been too long since he’s seen that amount of happiness on Sonny’s face. It doesn’t completely fill his eyes like it used to, but it’s there. Moments like this show him how much progress has been made, but how far he has left to go yet. Once again, Peter reminds himself to bring up the idea of counseling tonight. He wants to see Sonny get better, whatever it takes, because if anyone deserves to be happy again, it’s him.

The sidewalks feel lonelier than before, now that there’s someone in his life that he can spend time with outside of work. With every jabbering pair in business casual, every mother holding her child’s hand, he recognizes how alone he’s been and how he walks unaccompanied to the office in his stiff suit that doesn’t lend well to the wrinkling forces of human movement. It’s rainy again today, and the bright colored umbrellas tell you who has something to live for as opposed to the plain black, green and grey. His own is the color of sleet, although he’s always thought about getting a clear one that he can look up at and see the rain on. There’s something pretty, something new about the earthy scent and the mini rivers running along the curb. A child to Peter’s left jumps in a puddle and laughs as it splashes up around their bright yellow rubber boots. Some of it speckles his own slacks, but he doesn’t mind. Instead, he finds himself smiling down at someone who takes pleasure in something so small.

He’s in a good mood when he gets to the office, from the morning with Sonny and the childish joy he experienced on his way. Carmen tells him that Calhoun isn’t here yet, but she’ll be by soon, and Peter thanks her as he goes into his office and pulls out his notebook. First up is Chester Lake, the enthusiastic rookie with no money who seems like he just got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Initiation into the 85 included going to Reyes’ house and joining one of their parties. Reyes calls the pimp, but everyone chips in the money for the hookers, beer, and pizza. The raid and arrests were just about a month ago, and the way Lake puts it, there’s someone else that they didn’t manage to get. Tall, maybe six feet. Blonde, thin, blue eyes. He wasn’t on the force, and he didn’t participate. Mostly he just cleaned and pretended not to see.

Over the intercom, Carmen tells him that Calhoun and Lake are here. Peter’s happy to buzz them in, and he doesn’t have to look up when they enter the room to know that Lake is going first because he’s the low man on the totem pole. He can turn him against the other officers, it’ll just take a little bit of work.

“My client is interested in a plea bargain,” Calhoun says, like that isn’t the entire reason that they’re here in the first place. “He has information about whoever decided to frame these poor officers.”

“This would be the mystery man you mentioned, right?” Peter asks.

He looks up at Lake, who really is just a kid compared to all the others. Fresh faced, still unsure, straight from the academy with no idea what he’s doing or where he’s going. In his eyes, he’s guilty and regretful. Yeah, he’s the type who’ll want to make things right. And if he can wrestle him from Calhoun, Peter knows that he’ll flip.

“No, he didn’t-” the words seem to shock Lake coming out of his own mouth, and Calhoun gives him a withering look. “I don’t care what everyone else thinks I should say. That guy. He wasn’t part of this, I don’t think he even wanted to be there. Vincent yelled at him a couple times, and when he got mad he hit him across the face. Went into the kitchen, didn’t come back. Vincent threw a real fit about it when he couldn’t find him. And that’s when we got busted.”

“So why are you making this man up? For a better deal? I don’t get the point here.”

Lake fidgets with his hands. “I’m not making him up. I think- maybe he was- I don’t know. Everyone else, they called him names, threw stuff at him. I don’t know why he was there, they all hated him. Wherever he went, I wanna make sure he’s okay, that they didn’t find him and beat him to death.”

Good conscience, then. 

“We’ll do what we can to find this man. But let’s talk about a deal: right now, we have you on patronizing prostitution and statutory. Your DNA is in that girl, and we know you paid her. We can drop the statutory on that. Maybe you didn’t know, maybe she lied to you about her age.”

“And what do you want?” Calhoun asks.

“Testify against the others.”

Before she even opens her mouth, Peter knows that she’s going to tell Lake not to take the deal. They’re all in this together, and she doesn’t want her case against everyone else jeopardized when they’re all chipping in to pay her.

“I’ll do it,” Lake says. “Whatever it takes to get them put away.”

“Chester, as your lawyer, I can’t allow you to-”

He turns to her. “Then you’re not my lawyer. I need to fix this.”

Peter smiles and starts writing.

After him, everyone else refuses any deal he throws at them, even to the end of the day when Reyes swaggers into his office. He doesn’t look worried at all, and Peter can’t help but notice that he doesn’t have a wedding ring despite being legally married. Interesting, especially considering the fact that they didn’t find the wife at the house. Maybe it was a husband, the man who Lake told him about. Again, Peter briefly considers that it could be Sonny. He’s tall and blonde and blue eyed, and he did have to get married to Vinnie, and the similarities between ‘Vinnie’ and ‘Vincent’ are still striking. 

“I don’t want a deal,” Reyes says the moment he walks in. “You don’t have enough to pin me.”

“But you’re here,” Peter points out.

Reyes shrugs and stares him down, almost like he’s trying to glare Peter into submission and get all the charges dropped. It doesn’t do anything but solidify his belief that Reyes is the worst of them all, and used to getting what he wants. Dismissing him for the night feels like straw in Peter’s mouth because he got nowhere. Nothing all day, except the mystery man that Lake may have made up entirely. The mystery man who nags at the back of his brain has started to look and sound like Sonny as Peter gets in a cab to go upstate to visit Pam. 

When he checks in and goes to see her, she doesn’t seem to see him. Her cloudy eyes look elsewhere, hands shake and reedy thin voice accuses him of being his father even though he’s not. Her thin strands of greasy hair frame a face that ages a millennia every single day without fail. Looking at the skin pulled tight over a hollow skull, it’s hard to see a person. It’s harder to see life looking at the ring of still dark bruising around her neck. She doesn’t recognize him when he says his name, reminds her that he’s the brother who spent his life trying to protect her. 

“She’s declining,” the doctor says, which doesn’t help at all. “We’re doing what we can, but I think she’s just too far gone.”

“She’ll make it,” Peter says, but he’s not so sure. 

She reminds him of a fragile baby bird, fingers fluttering wings and and beak lips that cover chattering teeth. The last time he saw her laugh or smile, she was young with flowing beachy waves and a drink in hand. It’s been too long since then. Her hand is that of an old woman’s when he holds it to remind himself that he can’t give up. The whole way home, her glassy eyes, wrinkled hands, and bruised neck haunt him.

At home, Sonny is staring out the window with an odd look on his face, thinking about something. It’s nearly eight, but it feels much later. Purple bags beneath Sonny’s eyes remind Peter too much of his sister and he has to look away and turn his sole focus on making dinner. He’s exhausted, but he neglected to pick something up on the way home, and he’s not that hungry anyway with his stomach twisting in knots like this. The tick-tick of the toaster fills the apartment as Peter spreads out his case files to hammer out some last minute details before arraignment in the morning. Mugshots and descriptions, an entire page of notes about the mystery man who Peter can’t seem to get out of his mind. 

“Come to the table? Just sit with me?” he asks, hoping that maybe he can start to cultivate more intimacy in whatever it is that they have. All of his things are left out on the table, staring upward while Peter plates the toast and pours a couple of glasses of water.

The moment he turns around, he nearly drops it all. Sonny’s staring at the files with his hand over his mouth and tears in his eyes. 


	13. Chapter 13

It’s  _ him _ . Face set in a hard line and fire in his eyes, staring into the camera with the sign in hand declaring his name. Sonny can barely breathe over the panic because why does Peter have  _ his _ picture? The words beneath it blur into illegible lines that he can’t read. It makes sense. The man- Nick, Amanda called him- of course it was never a new person. It’s  _ him _ and he’s going to die because he’s been caught away from the property and he’s cheating. Overwhelming. Too much.

“Sonny? Talk to me, tell me what’s wrong.”

He squeezes his eyes shut and steps back. “That’s him. Vinnie. He’s- I- it’s him.”

“Vincent Reyes? That’s Vinnie?”

Sonny nods.

“Okay. Okay, alright. I’m gonna put the papers away so you don’t have to see. Count to five.”

He does, his voice much stronger in his mind than he thinks it would be aloud.

“Open your eyes. It’s okay. Open your eyes and look at me.”

Doing that takes a complete override of the panic shutting his body down and making him want to run. But once he does it all he sees is Peter, standing in front of him with concern written into his features. Green eyes, bright, vibrant, alive. He’s there, shielding him from the world and slowly, with Peter’s quiet coaxing, Sonny calms down to just a racing pulse and a faint lightheadedness. By the time he’s calmer, he registers that Peter is promising that  _ he _ will never be able to hurt him again. He’s safe now. No matter what happens, he will never have to go back and it’ll all turn out okay.

Whatever frail appetite he had built up has withered into a squirming feeling in his stomach, but he still manages a few bites of toast to appease Peter’s worries before returning to the window to write. It seems easier for the words to come right now, even if they’re not as beautiful as they used to be. Flowery language crimps down to stiffness that still seems to get his point across well. Sometimes the jagged structure makes it all fit the shards of emotions clattering in his chest like loose pennies in an altoid tin. Other times it stabs into his veins in crystalline knives that don’t know how to shatter.

Peter watches him from the table, typing on his phone and scribbling notes on a legal pad, but his folder stays shut and out of sight for the stretch of time that seems like hours between the picture and the time Peter stands up and says he’s going to bed. He pauses expectantly at the entry to the hallway, glancing back at Sonny as if to say ‘you coming?’ before he goes all the way down. 

It surprises even himself when Sonny shuts his notebook and stands up to follow Peter to bed. They brush shoulders slightly, but nothing more until they actually get into bed and Sonny finds himself sinking into Peter’s arms. Of all the things that he thought would make him feel like the world can’t get to him, this is something he never considered. When they were younger, he liked this, but it was more because it made him feel wanted in a way that nothing else quite could.

He sleeps through the night like that, only waking up to the sound of Peter’s alarm blaring that it’s time to get up for work. The little sound of sleepy annoyance is cuter than it should be as Peter slowly wakes up, propping himself up on his elbows and running a hand through his messy bedhead. He’s adorable like a sleepy puppy, blinking into consciousness first thing in the morning. Little streams of sunlight drip through the window and pattern onto Peter’s face, making him groan when he moves enough for one to fall across his eyes. As he drags himself out of the covers, Sonny reaches for him and silently pleads for him to stay.

“I need you to see Amanda today. Since last night you pointed out the photo,” he says gently. “Or if not today, then soon. That way we can make sure he goes to prison for a long time.”

Cold wraps around Sonny’s throat. “I don’t want to see him. I can’t. I- I can’t.”

“Okay, you don’t have to. You don’t. You just need to tell Amanda that it was him so that we can make sure he never hurts anyone again,” Peter assures.

That doesn’t mean that Sonny wants to go anywhere near  _ him _ . Before that, he’d rather crawl into a hole and never come back out again. It’d be safer, less painful to die there. But he doesn’t say any of that as he takes the clothes that Peter gives him and dresses painstakingly slowly. Maybe if he takes long enough, he can stall the day until it’s too late to be brought in. He scrambles for any reason to get away, but nothing comes to mind. Even tying his shoes, he goes as slowly as he possible until all he can do is follow Peter out of the apartment and stay close to him. It feels like every shadow and coat and taxi is out to get him. 

He holds Peter’s hand and tries to sink into his hoodie in hopes it’ll hide him from the world. Sonny watches red flicker green reflections of the traffic lights on the hood of a black car that speeds away quickly. Beauty in something so small and cold on a morning with air gone still and stagnant in the absence of wind lightens the weight on his shoulders just enough that they stop curling inwards. 

Peter walks him inside and all the way up to Amanda, who doesn’t look like she slept all the night before. Her tired eyes have sunk into her pale skin, emphasized in contrast to her loose fitting dark clothes. She smiles when she sees them, but her face is tight. When they get close enough, she shakes Peter’s hand and says something vague to him about protection. Sitting at one of the desks is  _ him _ . No, not  _ him. _ Nick. Amanda called him Nick and that’s who he is, who he has to be since he hasn’t killed Sonny already. 

“Key is under the mat, I’ll be home at six,” Peter says. He kisses the top of Sonny’s head and leaves, glancing back every few steps with a soft expression on his face. 

Olivia greets Sonny and asks him if he needs anything. He shakes his head and lets Amanda take him back to the now familiar questioning room where she asks him to name  _ him _ and write down exactly what was done. So that they can put him in jail, she reminds him when he hesitates. Words pour quickly like water down the drain as Sonny’s pen drags over the paper. Two pages. Three. Four. Detailing the hell he lived in when he left school. This is what he’s been doing in his notebooks anyways, but knowing that someone will finally begin to understand, it lifts a weight off of Sonny’s chest with every word.

This time, when Amaro comes in after a while, Sonny doesn’t feel like he’s about to die. Instead his hands just start to shake which, no, isn’t good, but it’s progress. Glancing up at him, he sees a softness in Amaro’s eyes. Humanity, and something protective that he’s never seen in  _ his _ face. The words stutter to a stop.

“I think we got off on the wrong foot,” Amaro says, holding out a hand. “Detective Nick Amaro.”

Sonny shakes his hand, but doesn’t introduce himself. Not verbally, anyways. He turns a couple pages and writes ‘Sonny Carisi’ in the margin to show to Nick.

Then he goes back to his statement, all too aware of being stared at as he finishes the last strokes of letters and hands the notepad to Amanda. She thanks him and tells him she’ll be back soon, leaving him alone with Nick.

“I won’t hurt you. I know I… I know I look like your husband, and I can be brash at times, but I promise you don’t have to be scared of me.”

He waits for Sonny to respond, but all of his words tangle in his lungs and all that he does is nod and play with his sleeves while Nick watches. 

“Okay. You don’t have to talk. But just know if you’re ever in trouble, you can call me.”

Nick pulls a card from his jacket and hands it over, thin black print listing his name and phone number. As Sonny tucks it into his pocket, he sees an almost smile on Nick’s face. Maybe later, he’ll put the contact into his phone, even send a message. But not now. He offers Nick a small nod, and then the door opens with Amanda to tell Sonny that he can go home. 


	14. Chapter 14

Sonny’s statement is faxed over in time for Peter to provide a copy to Calhoun before Arraignment. “I’ll be adding charges of domestic battery, kidnapping in the first, and false imprisonment, by the way.” He hands her the folder before he goes on. 

“On what grounds, counselor?”

“Your client did tell you he’s married, didn’t he? His husband made an official statement to the NYPD this morning.” With a smile at the expression on her face, he sweeps into the courtroom. 

Before Reyes are all the others, including Lake, who stands alone without a lawyer. Peter feels bad for the man, who genuinely feels guilty and wants everything to be okay. The only guilty plea, and as Lake allocutes to what he saw and did, his eyes go glassy and he stares down at the desk in front of him. The protective instinct deep in Peter’s chest makes him want to walk to the young man, pat him on the back and tell him that when he gets out of prison he’ll turn out okay. He’s fit, he has a good conscience. Private security or something, or perhaps some classes at a community college and he’ll be alright.

At the end of the block, when Calhoun and Reyes come in, Peter is tired and ready to stop thinking about the whole situation. He can’t look at Reyes without seeing the fear in Sonny’s eyes, the panic and the pain. This is the man who did that to him. From concrete to cling wrap, stealing his voice and his confidence and his happiness and his love. It makes something like fire and bile rise in the back of Peter’s throat. Keeping his tongue from lashing too sharp and getting himself in trouble takes a lot of self restraint.

“Considering the charges, I request remand, your honor,” he says, keeping his eyes on his notes instead of the judge to seem less angry than he is.

“This is ridiculous, my client is a respected police officer with ties to the community and a husband-”

Peter looks up at Reyes and he doubts he can keep the hate out of his eyes. “A husband who he held captive for years and beat severely. Officer Reyes is-”

“At this time, the defense would like to ask that Mr. Stone recuse himself from the case,” Calhoun interjects.

She’s smiling, a look that never bodes well for Peter when she traipses into the courtroom with the scum of the Earth on her heels. His lungs are full of water but he hides his pain in adjusting his suit.

“On what grounds, counselor?” the judge asks.

“The husband of my client, Mr. Stone’s alleged ‘victim,’ is currently staying in Mr. Stone’s home and the two have known each other for a long time. He’s biased dangerously against Officer Reyes.”

Thousands of arguments bubble up inside of him but he doesn’t get the chance to say any of them before the judge asks him if that’s true. He has to agree, and just like that, he’s being removed from the case. Not just Reyes, all the officers, including Lake. It’s a mess and the judge says that the case will be handed over to a free prosecutor and he’ll have no choice but to return to work and keep an eye on it. While he’s upset about it on principle, it suddenly occurs to him how Sonny will react. Possibly having to go through the statement all over again. Having to testify in a courtroom of strangers. Being prepped for a trial by some old and bitter prosecutor he doesn’t know. This whole thing is a recipe for disaster and Peter wishes he had been able to argue.

As he leaves the courtroom, Reyes has the audacity to laugh at him. That laughter rings in his ears the rest of the day and the whole way home, burns a flush onto the back of his neck and makes a hard knot in the pit of his stomach. He has to break this news to Sonny. Nothing will make that go away.

Carmen texts him the name of the new prosecutor on the way home. Rafael Barba. Bronx ADA, stellar reputation for winning the impossible and for mouthing off to whoever will listen. If someone else is taking this case from him, at least it’s someone who has a good chance of winning it. The only question is if he’d be able to do it without Sonny’s testimony. Probably not, considering that without documentation it’s just his word against Reyes’, but it would be nice to think about it like that.

When he gets home, Sonny is sitting on the couch as opposed to the bay window, gripping the edge of the couch cushion and looking a little like he might be sick. “Sonny?”

“He’s going to come for me, isn’t he? He’s not gonna let me leave.”

“I won’t let him,” Peter says.

He drops his things to get down on his knees in front of Sonny and hold up his face in careful hands. It’s hard to tell if he’s getting better or worse when some mornings he looks alive again, and some nights he looks as skeletal as he did that first night. It’s like watching a balloon slowly leaking air no matter how much helium is pumped into the rubber lip. Not for the first time, Peter wonders if he’ll ever be able to do enough.

“You’re gonna send him to prison, right? That’s what Amanda said. That you’d make sure he won’t ever come back.”

Before he can stop himself, Peter blurts it out.

“I won’t be prosecuting the case.”

Sonny pulls away, lips curled and eyes frantic. He looks like a twelve year old, in his eyes. They’re young and too trusting, but betrayed. A sudden cold takes over Peter’s palms, too empty without the lazy weight of Sonny’s head pressed into them. Feet trip over each other as Sonny starts to pace in the empty space behind the couch.

“My objectivity was called into question,” Peter explains, “I was taken off the case. A man named Rafael Barba will be taking it over. He’s a good man and a good lawyer, he’ll do everything he can-”

“But he’s not you.”

Fear, anger, pain, betrayal, it all swims across Sonny’s face in a fraction of a second before he’s burying it all with the heels of his hands pressed to his eyes. Every harsh breath rattles his chest and echoes in the silence that Peter can’t break. His nerves are fraying, his chest is itching, he just wants to make it all better but he can’t. It always hurts so much when he can’t do anything. Right now, Peter’s drowning in how useless and stupid he feels and if only there was more he could have done. His own resentment at his failure is almost as potent as his desire to hold Sonny until everything’s okay and the world stops caving in on them both.

“No. He’s not. But it’ll be okay.”

Something seems to strike Sonny and his face drains of what little color it’s capable of holding nowadays. “I’ll have to talk. In front of all those people. I don’t want to. I can’t. I can’t look at him and I can’t talk and I can’t do it, Peter, please don’t make me.”

“I won’t make you,” he tells him.

But without that, Peter doubts that they can get Reyes put away for as long as he deserves. No testimony will be admitted without a cross-examination, and really, how can Peter let Calhoun tear Sonny to shreds whether there are people watching or not? He stands up to his full height to reach out to him, pull him in close and hold him until everything stops hurting so fucking much. The second he opens his arms, Sonny falls into him and balls up Peter’s suit in shaking hands to hold on like it’s a lifeline, his last chance to claw out of whatever hell he spent the last eight years in.

Even when his legs are tired from standing so long, and the streets turn black with neon artificial accents, Peter stays there letting Sonny feel, for once, like everything will be okay even if there’s no guarantee that it ever will be.


	15. Chapter 15

“Barba’s a hardass, and he can be brash, but he’s there to help you. Whatever happens, he won’t hurt you, even if he seems scary.”

Peter walks Sonny all the way to Barba’s office, waits with him until they’re called into the wide room with its shelves and shelves of books that are far less intimidating than the man sitting behind the desk. He has piercing green eyes, paler than Peter’s but twice as intense. His suit is pressed. Tie clipped. Hair gelled. Not a single cell out of place. He’s shorter than both of them, but his presence fills the room and sucks all the air of it. It’s a domineering aura that has Sonny sinking back into Peter’s side.

“Sonny, this is Rafael Barba. Mr. Barba, Sonny Carisi.”

His handshake is firm, and his gaze unwavering. Sonny struggles not to look away, but he knows that his grip is weak and he looks every bit the pathetic wisp of a person that he is. Before leaving, Peter kisses Sonny’s temple and promises to be home on time tonight. Now he’s alone. With Mr. Barba. Mr. Barba, whose face softens when he looks up at Sonny after scanning a file folder. 

“I’m assuming that the detectives and Mr. Stone told you that you’ll have to testify?” Sonny nods. The lack of a verbal response has Mr. Barba’s head tilting to the side. “Okay. I was going through the notes from Detective Rollins- she said that you don’t talk.” He shakes his head. “Right, so, how exactly do you expect to testify if you won’t talk?”

That’s something he didn’t even consider. Telling so many people what he went through, that’s occurred to him and had him worried. It never came to mind that he can’t even speak to anyone except Peter. Yet another reason he’s broken and it would be easier for everyone if he just disappeared. While he laments the fact that things will never be okay, he doesn’t notice Mr. Barba powering on a computer with an open window on it.

“You type, and then you press the speaker button in the top right corner. It plays everything out loud. Think you can handle that?”

His patronizing tone brings back rough memories, but Sonny pushes through it, reminding himself that Mr. Barba is here to help him and not make him feel small. He sits down in front of the computer and types out a test statement. At the push of a button, it reads his words out perfectly and Sonny smiles, looking up because he can communicate easier now.

“So, let’s go over your statement. You were dating Reyes for three months, and while you were at dinner one night he took you to his home against your will. You were not allowed to leave at any time, except for the one occasion when you got married to him. He justified it by saying it was to prove love, but you overheard him talking to his friends saying it was spousal privilege. You had to do whatever he told you- make him meals, do the chores, clean up after his binges, and if you didn’t do what he wanted he would beat you. If he had a bad day, he’d slap you. Bad week and he’d starve you. If you got mouthy, he’d lock you in a dog cage. You escaped one night during one of his parties, and spent a couple nights on the streets before Mr. Stone found you and took you into his home. It was a month before you reported the abuse to the police, and a week before you could put together a statement. Right?”

Sonny nods again, faster than typing. 

“If there’s any possibility that any part of your story was exaggerated in any way, you need to tell me now.”

He shakes his head.

“Good. Now, I’m gonna run through the questions I’m gonna ask you.”

It’s easier than Sonny thought it would be, because Mr. Barba is kind and careful. He smiles at Sonny a lot. His voice is soft and he coaxes Sonny into answers. Like when he made his statement to Amanda, getting it all off his chest makes him feel better. But then, when it’s all over, Mr. Barba schools his face into something cold and inhuman.

“I’m going to run a cross-examination on you, like the defense attorney might. It’s not going to be fun, and I’m sorry.”

Sonny wishes that he didn’t agree. Where earlier he was so nice, now he’s nothing but brash and he seems to want nothing more than to make Sonny feel worthless. By the end of it, he’s near tears, but once it’s over Mr. Barba thanks him and tells him that he can go home and that when the trial comes, it’ll all be okay. He asks in the kind voice from earlier if Sonny needs a ride home, and he says no, he can take care of it himself. Amanda offered to drive him.

“Remember,” Mr. Barba says as Sonny’s preparing to leave, “You have an order of protection. If Reyes come within fifty feet of you, you start recording. Record everything that happens and send it to me, or to one of the detectives. We can protect you.”

With his arms wrapped around his body, Sonny nods and leaves. Outside, Amanda is standing by her squad car, waiting for him. He smiles at her and they get in the car to run back to the station. “I’ve got some work to do, Peter’ll walk you home when he gets off work,” she says.

It feels strange, being treated like a child who can’t take care of himself. He doesn’t blame them, because in truth he doubts he can handle five minutes alone. Not on the crowded streets where anything can happen because there’s too much going on. Already he’s overwhelmed just sitting at Amanda’s desk and writing on one of her notepads about nothing in particular. There are too many people walking by, too close to him. None of it bothers him enough to draw him from his writing until  _ he  _ walks by.

“Hey, darling. You know, I’ve really missed you around the house.”

Sonny nearly drops his notebook. This isn’t real, right? It’s just like in his nightmares, it’s not real. He drags the pen across the paper and keeps his eyes down.

“You’re making such a big mistake. You can still come home, baby. Go back to how things are supposed to be.”

_ His _ hand falls on Sonny’s shoulder and he thinks he’s going to throw up. Vaguely, he hears Nick yelling for  _ him _ to get the hell away, but the loud noise makes him feel like curling up into a ball and disappearing. Amanda’s voice cuts through the fog, telling him that he’ll be alright and to just breathe. Just breathe. Like that’ll make all the pain go away. He gags on the air and next thing he knows there’s a garbage can in front of his fuzzy vision and he throws up into the little plastic bin. A hand rubs over his back, soothing him through the mess until he starts to see again.

When he comes back to himself, Sonny feels like crawling into a hole and laying there until his body turns to dust that blows away with the slightest breeze. The smell of his own sick doesn’t help, but it fades as Amanda hands the garbage can to someone and keeps telling him that everything will be fine. Feeling just one hand on his shoulder was enough that he remembers more and more and he thinks he’ll throw up again. With his head in his hands, learning how to breathe, he wants nothing more than to not feel like his entire being is collapsing.

“It’s okay, Sonny. Keep breathing, you’re doing great. Nick, can you grab some water?”

Next thing he knows, there’s a water bottle in his hand but he doesn’t have the coordination to drink it. It just shakes in his grip and he squeezes it like it’ll make him feel more in control. It doesn’t. Even when he squeezes so hard that the cap breaks off and the water explodes all over him. He didn’t even know he had the strength to do that.

“You know what, let’s get you somewhere quiet, okay?”

He’s guided up out of his chair and away from all the noise and light and people into a quiet room with dim lights. The water bottle stays in his hand the entire time, even when he settles onto a mattress and a blanket is tucked around him. 


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have this chapter early because I just finished a draft of ch19 and I feel bad

****

Over the phone, Barba sounds tired. He says that Sonny’s story is good, but he’s worried about credibility when Sonny can’t speak out loud and he doesn’t handle the stress of cross well. Both of them want justice, he had said, but it might not be worth it to put Sonny through that when he’s already so fragile. This is the first time that he’s heard of Barba recommending a victim not testify, a realization that turns Peter’s body cold from the inside out. He doesn’t know if Barba’s also corrupt, or if things have just gotten that bad for Sonny. Peter hates this whole process. All he wants, all he needs, is to wave a wand and make all the pain go away. Why can’t he do that? If only it was so easy.

“Everything else you gave me is solid. Calhoun won’t take a deal, that’s her problem, but I’ve got them. The only issue is the abuse charges. No evidence, no immediate outcry, and he’s a wreck. I don’t know if I can get a conviction. Even trying might make it look like I’m reaching and it could jeopardize the actual case from the bust.”

“You have to try.”

Barba sighs. “I don’t know if it’s worth it, I’m sorry. I’ll keep you updated.”

After the pleasantries of a cold goodbye, Peter puts his head down on his desk. The wood, smooth, polished, and unforgiving prevents the comfort that he isn’t so sure he deserves anymore. Other cases need his attention, but they can wait until he stops feeling like the world is getting too small. He makes it five minutes into his pity party before the guilt takes over and he starts working. Another big case, this time with two minor internet celebrities. The vlogger accused his roommate, the beauty guru, of assaulting him after she gave him drugged wine. It’s mess, with no proof and no happy ending. Happy endings are hard to find, harder to make in real life. If this was a Hallmark movie, everything would turn out okay, but it’s not and it won’t. Somewhere deep inside of him, Peter knows that nothing will be okay. 

He pushes the notion down to power through the paperwork, stacks and stacks that he’s drowning in no matter how many folders he hands off to Junior DAs to do the case law research. Two and then three and then four o’ clock roll around without notice until at 4:17, his cell phone rings with news that his his chest crumpling and churning. Shards of shattered glass slash his lungs, litter his cheeks in the burning cold. He’s in an Uber demanding an address before he even registers that he’s crying. Hot, salty tears cut down his face and drip onto his suit. The car can’t move fast enough. Over and over he’s telling himself that this can’t be true. Nothing he understands or knows can be reconciled with the simple fact. 

Pam is dead. 

They say she tried to hang herself again, and this time they didn’t get to her before it was too late. Her neck broke. She didn’t suffer, it was quick. Quick, unlike the drawn out agony of her last attempt as her feet kicked the open air. It’s impossible to imagine the kind of pain someone must be in to kill themselves, to even try. Especially more than once. What it must feel like to find life so terrible that seeing the sunrises and hearing the chirping birds isn’t a good enough reason to wake up in the morning is something that he can’t even begin to comprehend. 

When he gets to the hospital and asks about Pam, the receptionist gives him the look he hates more than anything. Pity. Sorrow. An unspoken apology and a poor attempt at comfort for someone whose world is falling to pieces around them. He’s taken back to see her- see her body- and the sheet pulled over her face makes it feel more real. All he can see are the greasy strings of her unkempt hair and the gnarled curl of her bony fingers. It’s hard to reconcile her with the vibrancy of her youth in moments of lucidity, harder to think that that’s his sister, dead on the cold metal table like she’s about to be autopsied. This is all his fault. If he’d found time to visit, if he hadn’t been so selfish and gotten wrapped up in himself. If he’d gotten it together and come up to visit her, maybe she’d still be breathing with her aggressive wheeze that makes it sound like there are thumbtacks in her throat. 

“She didn’t suffer, Mr. Stone. It was fast.”

“So you said,” Peter deadpans, refusing to look up at the doctor. “Do you think that if I had visited, she wouldn’t have…?”

He feels the long pause in the form of full pounding at the base of his skull. “You can’t blame yourself for this. It’s no one’s fault.”

The temptation to snap that she was fine before he stopped coming rises up like vomit in the back of his throat, but he chokes it down. Peter’s fingers drag down the sheet with a mind of their own to look at her sunken, stiff face. Death suits her, and isn’t that a terrible and morbid thought? He draws back up the sheet as the tears continue to pour. The hand rubbing his back to soothe him does nothing but make him hurt worse because he wasn’t around to offer even that much to Pam in her final days. 

He’s taken from the room to drink water and cry, with a promise that the paperwork can be done tomorrow. They let him stay for a long time, hating himself as the loss washes over him in waves that keep coming over and over again. Every second that drags on hurts him worse. By the time he can force himself to move on cold robotic limbs, he has to rush to the precinct to pick Sonny up and take him home. Home, to safety and a little haven that they’ve built. They can play house and Peter can pretend he’s not disintegrating under grief and stress and worry and pressure and guilt, and he can act like it’ll all be okay because Sonny deserves that at the very least. 

Rollins tells him to be extra careful tonight because it was a rough day, and Sonny’s face has the same cold death that Pam’s did. Peter wants to hold him and promise him it’ll be okay, despite not knowing if it will. That might be the worst part, the not knowing. Unable to reassure or help or do much beyond being there when Sonny cries. Their walk home is tense. Every so often, Sonny looks at him from the corners of his eyes, but he doesn’t speak. The silence is calm and Peter embraces it with his entire brain. When the air starts to waver and stale around their heads, he ignores it.

It’s all too much. Pam. Sonny. The case. His job. The world is dissolving and crashing and burning and Peter’s left standing in the middle without a life vest or so much as a lungful of air absent of smoke and ash. Walking in the front door, he barely keeps himself upright to stumble into the kitchen. He needs a drink. Something, anything to dull the razor edges of the pain digging in from all angles. The first thing his hand closes around is a beer bottle that he thumbs the cap off of so he can drink. Then he starts to cry. 


	17. Chapter 17

The first thing that comes to mind is that Sonny doesn’t know what to do. Peter’s drinking and crying and he doesn’t know how to do anything but watch. Tiles are great for acoustics, amplifying every sob and the scratch of the bottle cap skidding under the fridge. Misery sits in the lines of his face and the prints of his fingers. His pain is so thick that Sonny can taste it in the air like copper pennies, permeating every sense and making him sick to his stomach yet again. Needles in his lungs, nails crushing into every part of him.

It takes him a long time to understand what Peter’s crying into his knees. A constant repetition of “I can’t” in the most childish voice that Sonny’s ever heard come out of his mouth. This man is impossible to identify as the rock who just last night held Sonny and made him feel safe, promised that everything would finally be okay. How can it be okay, when Peter is a tangled bar of yarn on the floor, drowning in alcohol that raises memories of messes on stained carpet floors by neon heels and dainty feet? Deep voice, betrayal’s growls. His feet step away from the hollow man collapsed in the kitchen.

“I’m sorry,” Peter cries. 

He doesn’t understand why. There’s nothing for him to be sorry for, not that he knows of. Apologies usually come in a mocking drawl, not with fat tears and the reek of frothy booze. If the situation was reversed, he doesn’t doubt that Peter would know what to do, how to make everything okay. Sonny has no clue. So he does nothing but watch Peter cry for what feels like forever. He doesn’t like this, he doesn’t know what to do, and it’s something feral deep inside him that stalks forward and rips Peter’s drink from his hand. 

“What’s going on?” he asks.

His voice sounds like an accusation, not a question. The glass is cold against Sonny’s hand, condensation making it slippery. He almost drops it to the tile floor where it’ll shatter into a beautiful rain that’ll slice his hands to pieces if he tries to clean up the mess. That might be easier than this, he thinks. Pain is familiar, a solstice and a constant. If he grounds himself with it, things might make more sense. The temptation to slam the bottle until it breaks is suddenly overwhelming and it takes every single ounce of control in his body not to follow through with it. Peter’s staring up at him like a wild animal, empty and anxious and looking like the frightened child that Sonny imagines he must’ve been on the night that Peter found him leaning against an old brick wall.

Words fly out from between Peter’s lips, splattering the ceilings and walls and Sonny’s face, body, hands. They stain every surface with their thick coated truths and complaints of a world that has never been fair. Like Sonny doesn’t know or understand that. Nothing about the last eight years is fair, and if he had the words to explain that he would. Instead, he freezes, back to the mannequin shell that lives in the windowsill, surviving only on remnants and the smell of fresh paper between cramps of the overworked muscles in his hands with every paragraph. He stutters for Peter to shut up about what’s fair. What does he know about fair? He’s a fucking DA for crying out loud, with a nice apartment in Manhattan and suits that are nicer than Sonny could have ever hoped to afford. That’s not fair. This entire situation, this life, it isn’t fair.

Now he’s crying too, because it isn’t fair and he’s angry and he doesn’t know what to do except fight. It’s been a long time since he’s raised his voice. His vocal cords groan in annoyance at the exertion. In his sudden surge of all the emotions that he’s been holding back, he starts to walk away. He needs to go somewhere, do something to alleviate the pain that’s crushing him in waves. It occurs to him to text Nick. Sonny takes his notebook and sits out in the hallway, still safely close to home but far from the turmoil of Peter falling apart. Seeing his rock, his comfort, his support, breaking- it hurts. He’s being selfish, he knows, but that doesn’t change how he feels.

He thinks about texting Nick, asking how he should help Peter. Although he hasn’t figured out yet if he trusts Nick like he does Amanda, he doesn’t have her number and it seems like Nick is the only option he has.

_ this is sonny. need your help. urgent but not an emergency. _

But he doesn’t click send. Instead he deletes the message and puts his phone down so he can try to write, but the words don’t come. His pen feels wrong in his hand. Two, maybe three ghosts of phrases will come and then he scratches it all out because it’s wrong. Everything is wrong. His own body feels wrong, he wants to crawl out of it and just stop. Sonny decides to go back to the roof and breathe some fresh air in hopes it’ll give him some clarity and get the words flowing. A dull ache starts at the base of his skull and flares out to encapsulate his entire brain, clutching down like a shrinking cage.

The ledge beckons and he sits on it again, looking down at the street below in its dizzying busy life. In the movies, this is where he would light a cigarette and half a life-changing epiphany while a symphony rises in the background. That, however, doesn’t happen. He does start writing, though, unstilted and flowing finally in the breeze pushing against his back. It isn’t strong enough to push him over, but it gets him thinking about just how easy it would be. He could fall, spin over himself, crash to the pavement and then he wouldn’t have to struggle through his recovery anymore. Wouldn’t that be so easy?

Around him, the world goes dark and the streetlights shine upwards in harsh beams. He only goes back inside because he can’t see to write anymore. Peter hasn’t moved from his spot on the kitchen floor, and he doesn’t look up when Sonny lets himself in and shuts the door behind him.

“I’m sorry,” Sonny says.

“Me too.”

“I shouldn’t have said-” He breaks off, swallowing back the tears. “ _ I  _ haven’t been fair. You’ve been through hell too, and I know that I’ve been a lot of work, and whenever you get upset I just- I’ve been shitty.”

“It’s okay. Want to sit on the floor and drink with me?”

Peter holds out the bottle of wine he must’ve procured while Sonny was on the roof. So very them, to be sitting in the kitchen and drinking even though they shouldn’t be. Just like when they were younger. He takes the wine and drinks straight from it, even though the taste is unfamiliar after so much time spent in forced sobriety. Before he gives it back, he gets down onto the tile and sits shoulder to shoulder with Peter. His face and eyes are red, from crying or drinking it’s hard to tell. They don’t say anything to each other the rest of the night, don’t have to as they pass the bottle back and forth until it’s empty and Sonny’s pleasantly warm inside. He’s almost asleep when he’s picked up and carried to bed.

By the time the next morning rolls around, he’s hungover and doesn’t want to crawl out of bed. Peter doesn’t make him, either. “-water and advil on the nightstand, and I left some breakfast for you on the counter. Text if you need anything.”

Soft lips skim his temple, tender fingers push his hair from his face, and then Peter leaves, taking the warmth of the room with him. Pulling the covers tighter around himself, he wishes that things were easier. Although he doesn’t know when, he knows it won’t be long until he’ll have to testify in court to everything done to him. Indictment can’t be far off, and after that are the long months leading up to the trial. He isn’t sure can do that, any of it, now or ever. Suddenly he’s awake, and the painkillers on the table are too enticing.


	18. Chapter 18

After that night, the indictment comes quickly. Getting ready in their room, Sonny’s hands shake too badly to knot his tie without help. The short-notice suit doesn’t fit him right, drawing attention to the fact that he’s still underweight and skeletal. The pale green silk of one of Peter’s favorite ties brings out the blue of Sonny’s eyes. Wide in their fear, as panicked as the thin fingers that grip at Peter’s wrists and beg him not to do this. He feigns obliviousness and smooths down the fabric. Carefully, he prizes his arms free and kisses each of Sonny’s hands before getting his own outfit put together and crisp. He has to testify too, according to Barba. Just some basic things about Sonny’s disposition before and after the abuse. There has yet to be a decision on if Peter will actually be called to the stand in trial, because the jury will sense his bias from a mile away. 

“You’ll be okay, I promise.”

Sonny nods. He’s been quiet all week and Peter’s starting to get worried, but it’s probably just nerves. This has to be hard on him, Lord knows that it’s tearing Peter apart. In just over an hour, they have to be in court, a fact that he’s mindful of when he grabs an apple for breakfast and hands Sonny a banana to settle his stomach. At least Calhoun won’t be there, just Barba. And as much of a brash, willful man as he is, he’ll take care of Sonny and make sure that Reyes gets indicted, tried, convicted and sentenced for his crimes. It isn’t right that Sonny’s had to go through this. 

They leave slowly, Sonny even clingier than usual. He hangs off of Peter’s arm, keeps glancing back up at him with a lost, unsure expression. Still a child at thirty-something years old, trapped and regressed by someone who fails to admit that he’s done wrong. A tightening of his jaw is the only indication Peter gives that anger boils away inside of him. At the very least, Reyes won’t be there to stare Sonny down. In the trial, he will, but hopefully by the time that rolls around Sonny will be strong enough to face him. He can only hope so. 

Going through the courthouse security lines, he feels the anxiety rolling off of Sonny. There are a lot of people, it’s loud, and he’s already been jumpy thinking about what today will hold. “You’re okay, you’re safe,” Peter soothes, holding Sonny closer and keeping his chin up confidently. Isn’t that what they teach paramedics and police and other emergency services? Stay calm, don’t let the victim/patient know that something’s amiss or they’ll panic twice as hard. Comparisons like this hurt. Sonny is not a child, he’s not mindless, he’s not incapable but at the same time he seems to be.

Barba is waiting for them on the other side of security with his briefcase tucked against his side and a phone in hand. 

“How’re you holding up, Sonny?” He asks in a voice so much more tender than the one he used over the phone with Peter. At Sonny’s thumbs up, he smiles. “That’s good. I’ll have the computer set up when you go in.”

That makes sense, setting up a TTS for Sonny to communicate with the Grand Jury. Peter can’t believe he didn’t think of that himself. Possibly because he’s been too wrapped up in other things to focus on any one thing for too long. Sonny deserves a chance, and it looks like Barba might be the better prosecutor to give him one. Should he have relinquished it sooner to someone who can do everything possible to help Sonny without getting caught in the mess of personal entanglements? It doesn’t matter because things are in the capable hands of Rafael Barba now, a man with a conviction rate through the roof.

Sonny’s lips quirk up at the corner, but the smile doesn’t reach his eyes. He turns his face up to Peter and makes a vague gesture with his hand first towards him, then at the hallway to the courtrooms.

“I’m testifying too,” he replies.

Shaking his head, Sonny grabs at his starched coat sleeve and looks up with pained eyes.

“I can’t go in with you, remember? It’s against the rules. But I’ll be there with you until you have to go, and so will Detective Rollins for most of the morning. She’ll take you home after. And when you’re talking to the jury, Mr. Barba will be right there to guide you through it. You’ll be safe, I promise.”

The words are heavy, but Peter still feels like they don’t quite reach far enough. Today, Sonny seems distant, quiet. Almost like he’s withdrawn, but it could just be Peter’s imagination. He doesn’t want to think about the fact that Sonny might be regressing in his recovery, or that can’t help. It makes him want to scream, or grab Reyes by the face and scream at him until he admits what he’s done and apologizes.

Barba shows them to the witness room, one that Peter knows well but has never spent time sitting inside, waiting to be called to tell a conglomerate of faces that something horrible has been done, and the man responsible has to pay for it. It’s odd to think about sitting at the witness table, too. No notes to tell him what to say, no thinking ahead like it’s an intricate game of chess. Everything feels so real now. It did before, of course, but not like this. This is when things take a turn towards getting Sonny the justice that he deserves.

In the witness room, which is a little colder than comfortable, Sonny stays tucked against Peter’s side. They’re not allowed to talk, but it’s okay because no words would come anyways. After an indeterminate amount of time, Peter has to leave Sonny sitting there with the terror of a little boy drawn into his face. The walk down to the courtroom feels like a thousand miles. His shoes click on the tile in an echo of human steps. He clenches his fists at his sides before the courtroom officer leads him inside. After he sits down at the table and surveys the jury, he looks to Barba. From the way he holds his shoulders, everything seems to have been going well so far.

“Could you please introduce yourself to the Grand Jury?”

He has to lean forward to reach the microphone. “My name is Peter Stone.”

“And what’s your relationship to this case, Mr. Stone?” Barba asks.

“The victim, Sonny Carisi, was my best friend in law school eight years ago when he suddenly vanished without warning. About a month ago, I found him living on the streets and took him into my home, where he later told me that he had escaped from an abusive husband.”

Some of the women in the jury get dark looks on their faces. Even if they haven’t been victims, they know someone who has. The statistics say that most women were victims or know one. Thinking about that is painful. One would think that years with SVU would change that, but they never can.

“Can you compare what Sonny was like before he disappeared and after he returned?”

“When we were younger he was one of the most energetic people I knew. Always had something to say, bright and bubbly and confidant. He was smart and passionate, would have made a great lawyer one day. Even when he was having a rough day, he always smiled. I think once he told me that being sad isn’t worth the energy. Sonny was a happy kid.” Peter has to stop to wipe his eyes before he continues. There’s a bubble in his chest threatening to explode. “Now he’s… he doesn’t really talk, or eat. He’s jumpy and nervous all the time, he has panic attacks and nightmares. When I look at him it’s like… It’s like looking at a ghost. He’s not the same.”

Barba’s face is sympathetic. “Did he tell you what happened while he was gone?”

Peter takes a deep breath. 

“He was beaten, emotionally abused, and locked in a dog cage.”

“Did he say who did that to him?”

“His husband, Vincent Reyes.”

He’s thanked for his time and dismissed. Going down the hallway, he bumps into Rollins on her way to testify. They share a tight smile as he hurries to get to the office so he can think about something, anything other than this. 


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning, graphic account of a suicide attempt

Typing out what  _ he _ did leaves Sonny exhausted in a way that drips down into his ribcage and slugs through his blood. Amanda waits outside and offers him an arm to steady his surprisingly weak legs. She supports him as they stumble down the marble steps that would crack open his skull and make him bleed if he tripped at the right angle. Suddenly he’s a little dizzy, but he keeps his balance down to her beat-up car and falls into the passenger seat. His head falls forward onto the dash and stays there, even when she gets in and the car engine purrs to life.

“You’ve been acting weird all morning, Sonny, are you feelin’ okay?”

He nods, but he isn’t at all. In an effort to make the world stop spinning, he keeps his eyes shut the entire way home so that he doesn’t have to see anything. If he looks at the world, he might throw up. Reliving all those memories has pulled him into a thousand pieces floating in the air like dandelion seeds that drift farther and farther apart with every harsh breath that jabs down his throat and tastes like iron on his tongue. His heart and soul are being tugged out of his body as ash puffs out from between a smoker’s cracked lips on cold mornings. It curls dark into the sky and doesn’t come back down.

Cement blocks have replaced his shoes and weigh him down on the way up to the apartment. Before she leaves, Amanda tells him that he can always call her if he needs anything and gives him a card. It’s the same font and design as Nick’s, only with her information on it instead. He crunches it in his hand and doesn’t let go, using his free hand to pick up his notebook and pen instead. The window beckons, glass that doesn’t open and a bustling city that does not care what happened to him or where he goes from here. Being alive is more trouble than it’s worth nowadays, he thinks to himself as he starts to write. Everything that’s been trapped behind a wall comes flooding out. He can’t escape what was done to him. He’s drowning in it, unable to get away from memories that wring his neck until air is only a fleeting idea.

Breathing gets harder with every sentence, every puddle of ink where his pen stays too long on the cheap paper. Writing it is no longer a cathartic dribble of consciousness, but rather a reminder that he can’t escape. Looking at it from an outside perspective only reminds him that no matter what he does, he won’t ever be able to get past this. Those words ring in  _ his _ voice alongside declarations that he’ll never be worth anything, that everyone would be better off if he just disappeared. After all, he was only around to be a punching bag and a maid. That house was only left standing because he tended to all the cracking edges and helped the women out of the house on their broken heels and blackened cheekbones. Once or twice he watched red rivulets drip down their legs and did nothing but tell them to get home safe. Doesn’t that make him just as guilty? He has their blood on his hands, too.

Sonny’s head falls against the window with a dull thud and he welcomes the pain. It was the only constant, now gone.  Everything in his life has turned upside down. Being with Peter again has helped him hold on, but now he knows that he’s just dragging him down. This way will be better for everyone and he knows it. Those thoughts all swim in his head when he starts a fresh page and begins to write. All of the words are a mess, a jumble. He tears out the paper, crumples it like Amanda’s car, and starts again. That one is wrong too. Again and again and again and again, he tries but every time it comes out wrong. He gives up after a while and stands, leaning against the wall in an effort to keep his balance. The urge to vomit is only suppressed by his desire not to mess up Peter’s nice carpets.

He stumbles into the bathroom with his phone in his hand. First, he types out  _ I’m sorry. _ Deletes it.  _ I love you and I’m sorry _ . Deletes that.  _ I’ll miss you. _ That too.  _ This is for the best. I’ll miss you and I’m sorry. _ Finally, one he sends before he can hate it and delete it like it’s predecessor.

The face in the mirror is barely his own. He looks like the the corpse he intends to become. Foreshadowing, he supposes with a cold laugh that sounds more like a demented robot than it does  an organic sound from his vocal cords. Under his shaky touch, the medicine cabinet swings open. Cough syrup and Tums, menthol cough drops and Advil. The advil is what finds its way into his hands. Extra strength, 600mg per pill. Vaguely he recognizes it as the ones that Peter would buy for his headaches when exam season rolled around. The pills are small and the color of pimento beans. Counting doesn’t matter, he just needs a lot. When he tilts the bottle, a small mountain tumbles into his outstretched palm and that seems good enough, even if he can only get a few down his throat with gulps of sink water at once. 

It doesn’t take long for him to start to feel it. His vision blurs first, like when the camera is moving in a photo and all the lines drag from side to side in a blend of colors and waves. He stumbles, falls back against the wall and slides to the floor. Then his ears start to ring, but his hands are too clumsy to cover them and protect them from the pervasive noise. Those two alone are awful, but things only get worse. Sonny doesn’t know how long he spends on the floor like that before his stomach starts to hurt. Not like the flu, like he’s being ripped open from the inside out. Breathing gets harder, but he keeps trying because his survival instincts kick in even if he doesn’t want them too. By the time he drags himself to the toilet with shaking arms to throw up, his fingertips and toes have gone an odd sort of static-y numb. He can’t taste his own throw up because his tongue is little more than a useless weight in his mouth. 

When he was younger, he thought of dying as a sudden black-out. It’s like falling asleep without ever waking up. This is different. He’s cold, first at his extremities and then in his chest. It wraps around his head and presses in painfully. If his muscles weren’t limp and useless, he’d be shivering. The tile is cool against his cheek. He wishes it would swallow him. Lying here, half-dead on the floor, he’s almost euphoric at the prospect of this finally, finally being over for good. It’s done now, and everyone can move on without his burden of existence. A smile threatens his face, freezes there as the world goes dark.


	20. Chapter 20

_ This is for the best. I’ll miss you and I’m sorry. _

The second that Peter reads the message, his blood runs cold. He calls Rollins on his way out of the office that he thinks something happened to Sonny. She can get to him faster, maybe before he does something rash if it’s not already too late. Before he leaves the building, he’s already sprinting, appearances be damned. The man he nearly pushes over isn’t important, neither is the woman selling roses on the street corner or way that he nearly trips trying to get home fast enough. He’s almost afraid of what he will or won’t find when he gets there. There are so many things that could have happened, and he doesn’t know which would be the worst.

When he gets to the apartment building, Amanda is just getting out of her car. They run up side by side, taking the stairs two at a time because it’s faster than the elevator. Lack of oxygen burns at Peter’s chest but he barely notices. His key scrapes at the lock as he struggles to get it open.

“Sonny? Sonny, baby, are you okay?”

He manages to get the door open. The apartment is still. By the bay window is a hailstorm of crumpled pieces of paper. Rollins reaches for them with careful hands, but Peter isn’t sure he wants to know what they are. Over and over he repeats Sonny’s name, checking the apartment until he gets to the bathroom. That’s where he finds him. Shaking, eyes rolled back in his head, cheek on the seat of the toilet reeking with vomit that didn’t get flushed.

“Call 911!”

Peter takes off his jacket and wraps it around Sonny’s fragile body. On the counter, the Advil bottle rests half empty on it’s side. It was almost full this morning. Sickness of its own claws at Peter’s thoughts. Tears start to cloud his vision, but he can’t look away, can’t loosen his hold even when Rollins comes in with her voice barking into her radio as she presses two fingers to Sonny’s neck to search for a pulse. The very idea that he might be too far gone brings an unbearable grief. He can’t lose him too. Not again, not him. When EMTs arrive, Peter is still clutching Sonny to his body. They pull him away, getting to work. Babble about charcoal and stomach pumping and his heart rate while Rollins gives them the bottle of pills that the drugs came from. From Peter’s medicine cabinet. Christ.

He allows Rollins to lead him out of the apartment. Her soothing words mostly fall on deaf ears on the drive to the hospital, because all Peter can think about is how he should have been able to do something, just like with Pam. Another failure, another splatter of blood on his conscience because he’s never good enough. There’s too much death, too many visits to the ER. His legs are stiff and clumsy following Rollins inside. She uses her badge to get them to Sonny’s room, but they can’t go inside. A cloud of doctors surround him. Medical codes and jargons that Peter can’t understand swarm the hallways, but what he does pick up isn’t good.

“I should’ve known something was wrong.”

Rollins shakes her head at him. “This isn’t your fault.”

They fall back into an uneasy silence for what feels like forever until the commotion calms and they’re let into Sonny’s hospital room.

“How is he?” Peter asks the sole remaining nurse.

“He’s in stable condition, but we’re going to keep an eye on him for a bit.”

And after that, what? The truth is that no matter how hard he tries, he can’t ever be enough. He doesn’t know how to handle trauma, or PTSD, or anything. There’s a reason why Pam was institutionalized- he couldn’t take care of her.  Fat load of good that did, but it made his life easier for a while. This line of thought is so selfish, and shallow, but he doesn’t want to live knowing that he didn’t do enough to save Sonny’s life. As it is, the waxen pallor of Sonny’s skin makes him look unreal. Every slow, paced out beep of the heart rate monitor strikes somewhere deep in Peter’s chest, reminding him that he should have done more. This is on him. It always will be.

Rollins pulls out her phone and checks a message that has her almost-smiling. “Barba got the indictment on all charges. Reyes is going to trial.”

That’s good, but Peter doesn’t say a word. What’s the point if Sonny doesn’t ever get to know that his abuser has been brought to justice? The fact that Reyes is out on bail right now, walking around and smiling and not regretting a damn thing makes Peter understand, suddenly, the loved ones of victims who enact out violence on the perpetrators. It’s hard to see someone so awful moving on with their life while everyone else is brought to a screeching halt.

“If Sonny doesn’t…” Peter can’t bring himself to say the words. “If he can’t testify, do you think Barba can still get the charges in? There was no cross-examination, but maybe if he fights hard enough he can get something admitted, or he can call you and I to the stand, or something.”

“Reyes won’t walk away from this, I’ll make sure of it.”

Hearing her confidence, he can almost believe her. Almost. If he was Barba, he knows he’d have to drop the charges without Sonny but he wants to hope that they get the bad guy this time. Too many have walked free when the victim recanted, only to later be found dead by the perp’s hands or their own. This world is a grisly one, the reality of which Peter has been forced to face. Every drip-drip into Sonny’s IV reminds him of that. All he can think of is the fact that Sonny got the pills from his medicine cabinet. That’s like handing him a loaded gun and telling him to sit quietly and not abuse the power that settles in his hands heavily.

“Do I want to know what the papers on the floor were?”

“Suicide notes. Some more complete than others, all scribbled on and tossed out.”

If he had been able to put his thoughts together, he wouldn’t have texted Peter, and no one would have found him until it was too late to do anything but plan a funeral at which only one mourner would stand over the casket. He wonders if Sonny would prefer to be cremated. A question like that isn’t one that should have to be asked of a man so young and seemingly healthy. The signs had all been there. Withdrawing and curling in on himself, refusing to eat and barely talking. It should have been obvious. Peter should have known. Should have done more.

“You can go back to work, Rollins.”

“Keep me updated.”

She pats his shoulder on her way out and leaves him alone to his pain in the sterile room. Back here again so quickly, this time so much worse. One day, maybe things will be alright, if only Sonny can survive to see it. For the first time in a long time, Peter bows his head and folds his hands together to pray to whatever God might be listening that this nightmare ends happy for both of them. He only pauses when a nurse comes in to tell him that Sonny’s being transferred to the psychiatric ward and that visiting hours are over. He goes home with a heavy heart and tears in his eyes.


	21. Chapter 21

As soon as he wakes up, a wave of disappointment rolls over Sonny’s entire body. Failure crushes against his chest and rolls through his thoughts. A scream builds and spins in his vocal chords but doesn’t make it further than the tip of his tongue before it fizzles out like a wave crashing on the shore with lapping fingers. His heart begins to beat out of his chest, making the monitor speed up far more than it should. In turn, that brings a nurse into his room who drops the tension in her shoulders when she sees he’s awake.

“Dominick, sweetie, take a deep breath,” she says. “You’re safe here, no one’s gonna hurt you.”

She comes closer and he flinches back violently, but he can’t get away from her. Her hand is cool against his forehead, smoothing through his hair as she shushes him until he gets too tired to keep struggling and relaxes into his thin hospital mattress. The clip on her scrubs identifies her as Renee. When he looks up at her face, blue eyes and dirty blonde ponytail framing fresh, dewdrop cheeks, he wishes that he could explain to her that he wants Peter. A nagging voice in the back of his head says that he’s been abandoned, but he doesn’t want to believe that Peter would do that to him. After everything, he’s been the only one Sonny could count on to stick by him. The very thought of being left makes him want to dive back into the waves of unconsciousness.

He starts trying to trace Peter’s name with his finger, although he doesn’t know if it’s at all understandable. Judging by the look on her face, Renee doesn’t get it, but she does pull out her phone and puts it in his hands to type on. 

_ Peter? _

“Peter… Peter Stone? Tall, green eyes, big nose?” Sonny nods quickly. “He was by about an hour ago, but we’ll give him a call for you.”

He wants Peter now, not sure he can wait however long it takes for him to come back. However, he doesn’t argue with her and instead focuses on taking in the look of the room around him. Pale blue walls, off-white sheets, and landscape art that’s meant to be soothing but instead draws attention to the lack of windows. This room is too small and too fake for his liking and he wants out of it as soon as possible, whatever it takes. Now that he’s awake, Renee is taking the IV out of his arm at the very least. He’s never liked needles, especially not in him. She staunches the bead of blood with cotton and tapes it down so that she can focus on checking his vitals and his pupils and other fun stuff before the doctor comes.

Before she leaves, she tells him again that he’s safe and not to worry about a thing. He keeps repeating her words to himself as he’s checked out and told that he’s lucky to be alive. Lucky. Sonny struggles not to laugh at the word choice and stays quietly complacent as he’s checked out and told that he’ll be kept for observation for a bit before they’ll send him home with a recommendation for a therapist.

Then he’s alone for what feels like an eternity waiting for Peter. Stale, sharp hospital scents sting his nose, crisp air chokes his breath. He doesn’t want to be here, he’d rather be at home in bed where he can sleep and pretend that nothing has changed since his last night in the dorms. That’s the first thing on his lips when Peter walks in, only for it to evaporate when Peter bends over the bed to hug him close with his lips to Sonny’s temple

“I’ve got you. I’ve got you now, I’ve got you.”

Peter keeps repeating those words in a tender voice until Sonny manages to pull away and look at him properly. He looks exhausted in every way, something that doesn’t make Sonny feel any better about what he’s done. If only he had succeeded, then he wouldn’t have to see and think about the pain that he may have caused. Truthfully, it never occurred to him that Peter would be hurt by his attempt. He figured that everyone would be relieved that he’s gone, not worried or upset that he thought it would be easier to just disappear.

“I wasn’t sure if…”

“I’m here,” Sonny says, surprising even himself. “And I’m- I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”

Empty promises come easier than the truth, but it would be too heartbreaking to tell Peter that he still wishes that he never woke up, and the relieved smile he earns makes the lie worth it. That makes an hour of lying worth it, really, while they sit together and Peter talks mindlessly about the flowers his neighbor has planted on the terrace. Hearing his low, soothing voice calms an ache in Sonny’s chest he didn’t know he had until it’s suddenly eased. Especially when Peter gives him the good news: _ he _ was indicted. Soon, going to trial. While Sonny isn’t sure that he could ever come close to facing and testifying against  _ him _ , it means that there’s a chance that retribution will be doled out as it should.

The little smile on Peter’s face is radiant in comparison to the dullness of the hospital, but it starts to fade when he asks, “Why? Why did- I don’t- why?”

“It’s all too hard,” Sonny answers.

He looks anywhere but the sorrow in Peter’s eyes. Glossy pools make him hate himself a lot because it’s his fault that there’s pain there. Sonny stares at his hands like they’re the most interesting things in the world. Little pale spiders that scramble over each other in anxious movement so that he doesn’t have to think about what he’s done. Silence breaks over the both of them for a few hours, drooling around the sound of “Friends” reruns in one of the other rooms. Listening in like it’ll help him put himself back together, Sonny pretends not to notice Peter pull out his phone and type quickly for several long minutes.

It isn’t for a couple more hours that he’s discharged, given his recommendation card, and Peter is advised to keep an eye on him and get him the help he needs. Still, they don’t talk, not even as Sonny signs his name on the papers and Peter orders a car to take them back home. Unlike when he lost consciousness, it’s dark outside. He doesn’t know how much time has passed, isn’t sure he wants to. Street lamps and bodega fluorescents seep through the windows at him for the entire drag. When he gets out and takes Peter’s arm, he swears he can feel it heating him up through the clean clothes Peter had brought for him to change into in favor of the flimsy gown that the hospital had put him in. It seems the cold never left.

Upstairs, after letting them both in, Peter goes straight to bed by himself, leaving Sonny alone. That hurts in a way that he doesn’t have the words to express. He starts picking up the failed notes from the floor, untouched since he scribbled them all out as failures, and carries them away to the garbage so that they don’t continue to contaminate the home that had become something sacred before he destroyed it with his destruction. Another wave of guilt and a desire to leave washes over him, but he doesn’t let it carry him as far this time. Instead, he keeps tidying up around the main area so that he has something to do other than feel useless or succumb to the inevitable nightmares when he shuts his eyes to go to sleep.


	22. Chapter 22

As soon as he wakes up, Peter calls in sick to the office so that he can stay home and keep an eye on Sonny. The past couple days have been absolute hell, unsure if Sonny would ever wake up. If he did, there was no way of knowing if he’d be okay. It might’ve been selfish to leave him alone when they got back to the apartment, but in his defence, Peter is exhausted and everything hurts too much right now for him to be able to do anything other than curl up in a ball and think about how wonderful it would be if he could wave a wand and make it all go away, just like that. Nothing is ever that easy, but it’s fun to pretend that it could be as he gets up and slowly grows into consciousness. Sunlight from the cracked blinds renders him sightless until his eyes adjust. The smell of something cooking draws him from his comfy covers.

He’s used to Sonny already being awake when he leaves his bedroom, but what he’s not used to is the food on the table. Fluffy pancakes, cheesy scrambled eggs, bacon that’s so hot the grease is still sizzling. 

“I made breakfast,” Sonny says.

Peter looks at the timid expression on his face and the rigid posture with his hands behind his back, and he knows. This wasn’t just something nice, it’s what he thinks Peter wants. How many breakfasts, he wonders, how many lunches and dinners were made in an effort to apologize for what were deemed transgressions? All in all, this moment feels weird and uncomfortable. Not quite right, but not wrong either. The same uneasy feeling that walking alone early in the morning gives him blankets the air and makes breathing an affair. 

“You didn’t have to.”

“Wanted to say sorry.” Sonny takes a step back into the kitchen. “For um. For making you worry.”

He can’t bring himself to sit down and eat when he knows the real reason that breakfast has been put on the table. “I’m not upset with you, Sonny, you do know that? I was scared, but that’s it. You’re not in any trouble, you don’t have to try and make up for it.”

Sonny shrugs and starts washing the dishes from his cooking in the sink with water so hot that Peter can see the steam curling off of it. If it’s too warm, he doesn’t give any indication as he scrubs away. It’d be a shame to waste a good breakfast. Still, he feels like it’d be wrong to be benefiting from whatever ingrained behavior made Sonny do this. Neither option feels good, but at Sonny’s prodding he sits down and stomachs a pancake, a couple strips of bacon, and half of the eggs. When he stands up and starts to pick up the dishes, Sonny runs forward and takes them away, bagging what can be saved and tossing what can’t. He moves with the speed of someone on a timer, taking only around five minutes to leave the kitchen pristine.

“I think that you should talk to someone,” Peter blurts out.

He’s been meaning to bring it up since he first found Sonny, but there was never a good time. And given what he’s tried, it seems like he has no choice but to say something. Wide eyes and slightly parted lips paint shock on the pallor of Sonny’s face. 

“What does that mean?”

The words are out, cannot be taken back. “A therapist, Sonny. The hospital even gave a recommendation. I love you, I do, but I can’t- I don’t know how to help you like you need. I think that you should talk to him and see if it helps. I’ll even call and schedule the appointment for you if that’s what it takes.”

When he finishes talking, the both of them go quiet again. That seems to happen more often, but this one is less filled with apprehension and more consideration and thought. Eventually, Sonny nods without a word and grabs his writing to sit by the window. It feels like so much time has passed suddenly, but nothing at all has changed. He picks up the blanket from the couch and drapes it over Sonny’s lap, tucking it in around him and offering a small smile. The glimpses of words he catches on the paper make his heart ache. ‘Blood,’ ‘no,’ ‘inescapable,’ and ‘destroyed.’ Pretending not to see anything, he leaves the room to call the number on the card the doctor gave Sonny last night.

Tomorrow at 9am is the appointment, and Peter tells Sonny as much before sitting on the couch with his computer and working from home. They don’t interact other than Peter offering Sonny a sandwich for lunch (declined) and some of the takeout he orders for dinner (which he takes a few reluctant bites of). He goes to bed early and makes sure Sonny comes with him and they fall asleep in bed together, sleeping the whole night.

Sonny is still asleep when Peter wakes up at 8:30, but he stirs the moment that he’s no longer being held. “You have to get up now, we need to leave soon.”

It takes a few minutes for Sonny to get out of bed and take the clothes held out to him to get dressed in. Peter’s going to take him to the appointment, then with the hour and a half before picking him up, he’ll go to the beach to spread the ashes currently sitting in an urn on the coffee table. Pam always liked the ocean. When they were kids they visited California once and went to the shores, making castles and letting the waves slap them around. Those memories are some of the happiest he has, and it’s them that tells him she would want her final resting place to be there. He can’t fight a little smile at the memory of how good life was when he was younger and yet untouched by the real world.

There’s an Uber downstairs to take them to the therapy building. Peter gives the driver a tenner to wait while he walks Sonny upstairs, promising to be back after the appointment to bring him home. It breaks his heart a little to leave him there in the waiting room, but he knows that he’s doing the right thing and that this is for the best. On his way out the door, he has to look back one more time and remind himself of that fact before he can leave the off-white walls behind and return to the Uber with his directions to the nearest beach. He tips before he gets out of the car.

While New York beaches aren’t pretty like LA ones, there’s something to be said for the vast expanse of choppy cold water that bends at the horizon.Constant motion rocks the sky unsteadily in a way that should be nauseating but instead is beautiful. He takes off his shoes and socks, hiding them among the rocks near the road in hopes they won’t be stolen while he does this. His sweatpants roll up easily so he can wade into the water. Gritty sand shifts beneath his feet and makes him shiver in a combination of the ocean and its sharp breeze. So easily, he could have had to do the same to the remnants of Sonny’s life. 

Death has come too heavy and too sudden in his life. Peter can’t bring himself to touch the ashes, so he turns the container on its side and lets the tide pull at them until it’s empty save for seawater. Just like that, she’s gone. Mist stings at his face but he refuses to let it, or what he’s just done, steal any more of his tears.


	23. Chapter 23

“I’m Dr. Huang.”

Sonny just stares at him. He doesn’t want to be here, but he does want to get better and have a life with Peter where he doesn’t have to be looking over his shoulder every ten seconds. In the chair across from him, Dr. Huang watches him with an open face and a pen in hand cocked like a pistol. That pen clings to his thoughts, not yet writing but brimming with promise of dissecting his brain cell by cell.

“Your friend Peter told me that you only talk to him, so I’m going to ask you to write things down for me, is that alright?”

A little whiteboard and a green Expo marker are held out to him. He thinks of huge whiteboards spanning an entire classroom with the reek of dry-erase freezing in the air as he accepts them and uncaps his marker in preparation. The first question feels like an obvious one, but he doesn’t know how to answer it. Why is he here? On a skin deep level, the answer is as simple as the fact that Peter asked him to be. In an instant, he realizes that he would probably do anything that Peter asks him to without a moment’s hesitation. But a little more than that, it’s because he overdosed on the bathroom floor in a parody of a suicide that didn’t kill him. Further down, it’s about how utterly destroyed he has become. The panicking and nightmares, the urges to do anything that’ll protect him from yelling, the constant terror that he’ll have to go back. He does know that he needs help if he ever wants to get better, but that doesn’t make it easy to accept.

Those are too many words for the whiteboard, so he just writes that it’s because he needs to get better. If he can’t do it for himself, then he owes Peter this much at least. Plus, the idea of feeling good for the first time in years is so appealing that he’s practically frothing at the mouth just from the thought of it. It would be nice to be happy. That’s the part he shows Dr. Huang-  _ I want to be happy _ .

“That’s good, Sonny. So why aren’t you happy now?”

Another loaded question. Being happy now is too damn hard, just like everything else. That’s not an easy thing to say though, but neither are any of the other things he could offer about the reality of his situation. No matter what he says, he doubts Dr. Huang would understand anyways.

_ Trouble adjusting. _

“Adjusting to what?”

Adjusting to being free, he wants to say. It’s dramatic, and he isn’t sure he’ll ever be truly free. Going from every waking moment spent walking on eggshells to sitting in Peter’s bay window to write was hard, but it’s less the shock of the change and more the reality of the situation hitting him that’s had him so upset. With  _ him _ , it was easy to dissociate or to pretend that what happened was normal. Suddenly, when he was forced to confront the fact that it wasn’t, all kinds of problems started to crop up.

_ Peter took me in after I ran away. _

“What were you running away from?”

Sonny’s throat tightens.  _ Vinnie, my husband. We were together since I left college, and he was really controlling. _

“Controlling how?”

Memories of being screamed at for daring to toe out of line beat against the inside of his skull, spattered with ghosts of aches where fingers liked to dig into his wrists, shoulders and neck. He fights them back with a fervor he doesn’t expect in order to scribble a half-hearted explanation of not being allowed to speak out of turn, eat without permission, leave the house, or miss a spot cleaning. He ends it with a brief sentence about the sort of punishments that rained down upon him when he dared to step beyond the carefully drawn line.

He doesn’t like the look on Dr. Huang’s face. Concern masks something in his eyes like horror or shock. Sonny curls in on himself and won’t look at him because it’s just easier that way. Hiding makes him feel less like he’ll be hurt at any moment. 

“So you ran away from Vinnie because he was hurting you?”

_ Yes _ , he writes.  _ Peter took me in and he’s been helping me. Vinnie got indicted thanks to him. And Amanda’s helped me a lot too. She’s one of the police that works with Peter. _

Every letter squeaked out of the marker seems pretty in glossy green on the whiteboard, despite everything he’s put on it already and probably will before the end of this session.

“You and Peter are close, then?”

They always have been. Fond quickenings in his heartbeat accompany images of nights spent crushed together in one of their beds because when the heating breaks again, it’s warmer that way. And there’s always been something nice about an arm over his waist and a hand in his hair. Even back in law school when it seemed like they didn’t know what they wanted, there was always a certain safety and peace with Peter right there beside him to hold him together. Ice cream for finals in June, hot chocolate for the ones in January. Hot chocolate, Sonny really misses. The last time he tasted it was with Peter years ago. And after reuniting when Peter found him, the stilted attempts at old intimacies have been the only thing holding him together when it seems like nothing will ever be alright again no matter what he does.

_ He was my closest friend at school and he always knows how to make me feel safe. _

Questions ping-pong back and forth for the rest of the session, pulling things from deep inside of Sonny’s chest and the back of his mind to explain in dry-erase marker on the whiteboard. He doesn’t feel better, per se, but he does feel a little lighter by the end. The difference is enough for him to think that maybe he should come back and let Dr. Huang help him. Before going back out into the waiting room, he goes so far as to schedule the next appointment in a week. It’s refreshing to make the decision by himself.

Peter’s already in the waiting room with a calm, peaceful look on his face that turns to a grin when he sees Sonny. “How’d it go?”

“I made another appointment for next week. I don’t feel great, but I- I feel slightly less… awful than I did before.”

“That’s good, really good. I’m proud of you.”

He puts his arm around Sonny’s shoulders as they leave the waiting room and go outside. The air tastes a little sweeter, and like it’s sensing the change, the sun has started to peek out from behind the clouds that had felt permanent. On the cab ride home, Sonny stares out the window and thinks about all the people on the street. He wonders if any of them are on their own paths to eventually getting better, or if they’re still in the dark. This is the beginning of a long road, but he’s finally on it and he has Peter with him to help him along. 

At home, they go upstairs together and Peter starts working because a day out of the office doesn’t mean he doesn’t still have tons to do. It takes a lot, but when Sonny picks up his spiral he sits beside Peter on the couch and relishes in the closeness while he takes his pen to paper.


	24. Chapter 24

Months go by with Sonny getting better and better every passing day. He goes to therapy every week, writes less and smiles more. Sometimes he’ll even pick his way through half of dinner with Peter. The nightmares come less often, the panic less intense. A few weeks ago, he started a part time job as a janitor at the elementary school down the block. He’s slowly but surely getting better, even if he’s not at 100% and won’t be any time soon. The only problem is that today, he’s being called in to testify in the trial against Reyes. While he’s much better, and Barba has prepped him well, Peter isn’t sure how Sonny will react to having to face Reyes and speak out against him. Okay, not speak, but the point remains the same. In his suit, Sonny looks much better than the last time he wore it. The bruises beneath his eyes aren’t as dark, and his frame has filled out some from eating more. He’s more man than corpse now.

“I’ll be in the gallery for you,” Peter reminds. “Mr. Barba will be there too, and so will Rollins and Amaro. There’ll be a lot of people, including officers. He can’t hurt you.”

“I know. I trust you.”

Sonny takes Peter’s hand and pulls it in against his chest for him to feel his heartbeat. It’s steady, slow. He’s not freaking out, which means that Peter shouldn’t be either. Easier said than done. Before he takes his hand back, he bows his head to kiss Sonny once, slow and sweet. His lips are chapped and warm. When Peter pulls away to go pour some coffee, he can’t fight back a small smile. Sonny doesn’t drink it, but once or twice he’s mentioned that he likes the way it smells on Peter’s skin, tastes in his kisses. That combined with its magic ability to wake him up have made it a staple that no morning is complete without. More than once, Sonny’s made a cup to go for him while he hurries through getting dressed because he couldn’t tear him himself from the comfort of bed with Sonny in his arms.

They leave on time today, hand in hand down the street to the courthouse. Already, reporters swarm the steps like hungry ants because the Reyes trial is going into its third day. Peter draws Sonny in close and whispers for him to keep his head down while they walk inside. The crowd surrounds them, begging for statements and thrusting microphones into their faces that Peter bats out of the way as they hurry inside. The halls are packed before the doors open. Sonny’s the first witness today, and the last on Barba’s roster. Right after he testifies, they can leave and Peter will figure out how to make Sonny feel better.

Barba pats Sonny on the back when they approach. “I’ll be right there in the courtroom with you, all you have to do is tell the truth. Everything will be okay. We have a computer for you to type on, and remember, no one can hurt you. You’re safe with us.”

Sonny still looks back at Peter for confirmation, shoulders dipping down when he nods approvingly. 

“Mr. Barba and I are gonna go in now. They’ll call you in a few minutes.” 

He squeezes Sonny’s hand before he goes. What’s funny is that he’s feeling the anxiety too. If this is too much, if it sets Sonny back all the progress he’s made, Peter doesn’t know how to help. In the courtroom, most everyone is there. The jurors are seated, the gallery filled with the blue wall and a collection of young girls, and the defense table organized with Calhoun and Reyes. He stares a hole in the back of Reyes’ head while things get in order for the day.

“At this time, the prosecution calls Dominick ‘Sonny’ Carisi Jr. to the stand,” Barba says. While Peter watches, Sonny comes into the room and sits at the witness stand. He nods in answer to being sworn in, something Barba speaks aloud for the court reporter. “For the record, Mr. Carisi is selectively mute and using a text to speech program in order to testify in court today. Sonny, can you introduce yourself to the court?”

Sonny types out his full name and his relationship to Reyes in the computer, which then reads it aloud in a stilted robotic voice. It’s still early, but Sonny is already ducking his head and keeping his body language tight. Through every single question, he’s timid as he answers, but he doesn’t cry and his chest keeps a steady pace as Barba coaches him through the questioning and thanks him before Calhoun stands up.

“Mr. Carisi- can I call you Sonny?”

He allows it. 

“Let’s go over the facts then, Sonny. You said that my client abducted you?”

In his seat, Peter bristles. He thinks he has a pretty good idea where this questioning will go. Calhoun will attack him because Reyes didn’t have a weapon. He didn’t threaten Sonny in any way to make him come home. He didn’t lock the doors. There’s no evidence of any physical injury. No one can corroborate. It’s a decorated police officer’s word against that of a college dropout who works as a janitor part time. 

“So isn’t it possible that my client never actually hurt you? When they were falsely arrested for a crime you masterminded, you ran, and you concocted a sympathetic story just to save yourself?”

Suddenly, Sonny’s eyes snap up to hers and he leans forward so that his lips almost brush the microphone on the witness stand. His voice is deathly quiet but amplified through the entire courtroom so that each venomous word rings against the walls.

“He locked me in a  _ fucking _ dog cage-” -the judge interrupts to tell him not to curse but he doesn’t stop talking- “-and he starved me, and he beat me, and he made my life a living hell. I nearly died because of him. Do not stand there and act like it’s my  _ fucking _ fault, because it’s not.”

“Mr. Carisi, please watch your language in my courtroom.”

“I’m sorry, your honor,” he whispers.

Then he’s dismissed from the witness stand and Peter gets up to walk him out of the room. Sonny’s shaking a little, with glossy tears in his eyes. “I’m so proud of you,” Peter says in the gentlest voice he can manage. “You have no idea how proud I am. Everything’s going to be okay.” He draws Sonny in close and holds him while he slowly calms down, rocking them back and forth a little and promising over and over that everything will be fine. Once he’s calmer, Peter starts to lead him outside. “Let’s get breakfast, hmm? Rollins likes the diner down the street, I know she’s taken you two or three times.”

“Sounds good.”

He hides a smile, lacing their fingers together and walking Sonny to the little place with the vinyl seats and old-fashioned feel. Some pancakes sound great, a sentiment he voices when they’re given menus by the sweet waitress with a tight bun. The light from the window shines over Sonny’s face, illuminating his blonde hair and pale blue eyes. He’s so, so, so beautiful, even angelic when the sun lights him up like this. Peter reaches up to pull him in for a kiss over the table because he simply can’t help himself.


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't respond to them but I do see your comments and thank you all so much for your kind and encouraging words <3 I've poured my heart and soul into this fic and I'm so glad to see that you all like it and that you enjoy reading it. For those of you who aren't on tumblr, my next fic is a Dorisi (Cardds) one called "Exhale Desire" and I promise it delivers on the angst. Thank you again for reading I love you <3

Sonny scans over the menu, actually reading it for the first time ever. He has to admit, the idea of French toast and hot chocolate is appealing, more so than it’s been in a very long time. When he orders it, Peter’s face lights up like a kid on Christmas. It’s the little things nowadays, he thinks, that make it bearable. Dr. Huang had told him that- focus on the tiny good things, let them carry him when he can’t carry himself. The sounds of life buzz and hum in the morning air that’s warm and stagnant from the broken AC clattering on one of the windows.

He stares out the window at the street, the shadows painting the sidewalk and the cars racing past at a mere thirty five miles per hour. Birds chitter and swoop low, stealing what they can find and drifting away in the blink of an eye. They’re free, and Sonny wants to fly away with them even though his feet stay firmly rooted on the dirty linoleum. In only a few short minutes, a waitress brings their drinks by: coffee for Peter, and a mug of hot chocolate with whip cream piled high on top of it for Sonny. He scoops it off the top and dumps into Peter’s coffee with a smile at the playful eye roll it earns.

“Didn’t that used to be your favorite? Cocoa with a mountain of whipped cream, no marshmallows?” asks Peter, removing it from his own drink and plopping it onto a napkin. “You had like eight cups a night during exam season, said it was your motivation.”

Shrugging, he takes the first sip in years of an old reminder of things that held him together when his biggest worries were little more than making his 9am exam after a night out. The drink is thick on his tongue, rich and creamy and everything that he’s missed. It’s hot down his throat, warm in his stomach. Satisfaction, comfort, safety, all of it spawns from that first sip that has his eyes shut in a moment where nothing else matters. Little things. He indulges in a second long drink before he puts it down and looks at Peter like he put the stars in the sky. Really, that’s exactly what he did, making the dashes of light that are all he needed to start trying, actually trying, to get better.

“Thank you for everything,” he says.

“Always.”

They hold hands on top of the table, Peter’s thumb rubbing over Sonny’s knuckles. This is everything he loved about the easy companionship they’ve always had, unchanged even after all these years. But at the same time, it’s different. Better. He knows that this is the start of something real and beautiful and life-saving. The smell of bacon and coffee saturates the air of the diner in the best way. In this moment, Sonny is unquestionably, irrefutably alive. Nothing can take that from him. He feels with every fibre of his being. The texture of the table, the pressure of the seat, the warmth of Peter’s hand, the warm air. All of it presses in around him and he wouldn’t trade it for anything.

When breakfast comes, Sonny’s intimidated by the meal he ordered. Sweet battered bread, dusted with sugar, smeared with butter, accompanied by a little glass of syrup. His mouth waters but his stomach makes the equivalent of a firm fist. Sonny picks up his fork and scrapes away the butter, taking most of the sugar with it, and hesitantly drizzles some of the syrup over it. French toast, God, it’s been so long since he’s had this too. Peter’s already a few bites into his breakfast as Sonny cuts a bite out of his french toast and brings it to his mouth. Cinnamon and maple, vanilla and sweetness. It practically melts in his mouth. Perfect, especially when washed down with more of the hot chocolate that he’s suddenly forgotten how to live without.

He gets through almost an entire slice before he feels too full to continue, but it takes him so long that Peter’s finished with his breakfast by then. “Home?”

“Home.”

Peter shells out cash onto the table before taking Sonny’s hand and leading him outside and back home where they have an entire life ahead of them waiting to be lived. More and more of his writing has been spilling on the pages, almost enough to make something he might let Peter read, some day. He wants to have his story known, however it happens and who comes to understand. Keeping it inside, he’s learned, does not do him well. And Dr. Huang did say that writing it all down can be really therapeutic, so there’s that too. One day maybe he’ll do something with all that he’s created, but he doubts he’ll ever be ready to share those intimate parts of him, put them out there for the whole world to see. He’s secure in the knowledge that he doesn’t have to, while at the same time something inside him says to do it, do it, do it.

At home, they strip out of their suits and get straight into bed. Something about court is just draining, and neither of them slept the night before. Tiredness pulls at them, makes their movements slow as Sonny relaxes into Peter’s arms. Nowhere in the world is better. No matter what’s ahead, they have each other and that’s not going to change. 

Sleep doesn’t come right away, although Sonny doesn’t mind because it’s enough to be here.

“I wish I had the words to explain how I feel about you,” he says. “You’re everything I love, need and want out of life. You took care of me when I was at my lowest, and you’ve stuck by me through everything, and I just- I love you. I loved you in law school when you got me through exams and taught me how to live on my own. I loved you when you shared your bed with me because I get cold so easily. I loved you when you found me and brought me here. I loved you when you didn’t give up on me. I love you. I really fucking love you.”

“I love you too.”

Sonny realizes suddenly that Peter hadn’t fallen asleep either. The words have been said and can’t be taken back. It hits him then that it’s okay because Peter loves him just as much. He tilts his head up for a kiss that tastes like coffee. Coffee has always been associated with Peter, given how many cups he drinks on early mornings and late nights. Squirming closer, Sonny lifts his hands to Peter’s face. There’s always been something incredible about being able to give the same affection he gets. It makes his heart beat faster and at the same time, he’s calmer than he’s ever been. Peter keeps his kiss lazy and loving. Without a demand for more, Sonny falls into it like he’s drowning, but in a good way. Like the water in his lungs is what he’s been missing for his entire life.

They finally break apart when actual oxygen becomes a necessity, sharing the same thin air between them and unable to stop smiling. Sonny shifts down the bed a little to tuck his head beneath Peter’s chin. His eyes are heavy. With the ease of only someone who knows that they are completely safe, he falls asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr is @space-carisi, and thank you for reading <3


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